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  • “It Would Make A Billion Dollars”: Jurassic Park Comparison Helped Barbie Get The Green Light By Warner Bros -TGN

“It Would Make A Billion Dollars”: Jurassic Park Comparison Helped Barbie Get The Green Light By Warner Bros -TGN

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  • Barbie’s success at the box office exceeded expectations, earning $155 million in the US and $377 million worldwide, making it the highest-ever opening weekend for a female solo director.

  • Margot Robbie’s pitch for Barbie to studios was based on successful combinations of big ideas with visionary directors, with Jurassic Park and Steven Spielberg as examples.

  • While reaching the $1 billion mark is still a long way off, Barbie’s strong performance and positive reception indicate it has a fighting chance, especially with its box office rivalry with Oppenheimer and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

Barbie star Margot Robbie explains how she compares her Mattel film adaptation to Jurassic Park helped get the go-ahead during the pitching process. Helped by Little women director Greta Gerwig, and starring Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, America Ferrera and Will Ferrell, Barbie first entered development in 2009. Robbie became attached to the project when she was cast in 2019 and was responsible for bringing in Gerwig.

In an interview with Collidertells Robbie how to pitch in her role as a producer Barbie to studios. She appealed to the financial possibilities of a film Barbie could provide for studios, and how it’s often the case that projects just need the right kind of match-up to be a success. That was true Jurassic Park came into play. Read Robbie’s full commentary below:

I think my pitch at the green-light meeting was that the studios prosper when they’re brave enough to pair a big idea with a visionary director. And then I gave a bunch of examples, like “dinosaurs and (Steven) Spielberg,” that and that, that and that — calling just about anything that was incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years. And I thought, “And now you have Barbie and Greta Gerwig.” And I think I told them it would make a billion dollars, which I may have oversold, but we had to make a movie, okay?!

Can Barbie hit the $1 billion mark?

Early anticipation for Barbie was huge, and it has already exceeded expectations with a record-breaking opening weekend. The film would go on to gross $110 million domestically in its opening weekend; at the moment of writing, Barbie has earned $155 million in the United States and a worldwide total of $377 million. This makes it the highest opening weekend ever for a solo female director, and brings it closer to hitting that magical $1 billion mark.

At the time, it was very likely that Robbie was joking with her Jurassic Park comparison, or just blowing hot air to see if the studios would be interested. Ironically, however, her prediction could be closer to reality than initially anticipated. Barbie has a long way to go before reaching $1 billion, but the signs are certainly positive, and its early performance has certainly given it a fighting chance. Barbie‘s box office rivalry with Oppenheimerand to a lesser extent Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning part onehas seemingly worked to its advantage, generating interest and boosting ticket sales.

The Barbie in return for Oppenheimer The battle seems to have captured the public’s imagination and rekindled the box office in the process. While it is impossible to predict how well Barbie will do in the long run, signs look good, and this is positive for Hollywood, especially against the backdrop of two strikes. If Barbie could hit the $1 billion mark, this could be a game changer for studios. Its future prospects will become clearer next weekend when it is revealed how much it has dropped from the opening.

Source: Collider