Greta Gerwig is first female director to enter Hollywood’s billionaire club

In the wild world of Hollywood, only a select group of 28 gentlemen managed to land a solo directorial credit for a billion-dollar movie. Now their esteemed company has been joined by a new member: film director Greta Gerwig, who brought ‘Barbie’ to the big screen.

‘Barbie’ has stepped onto the stage with a whopping one billion dollars in global ticket sales over a weekend that’ll go down in cinematic history. In doing so, it becomes only the 53rd movie in movie history to have earned more than one billion dollars at the global box office. The film is rewriting the script on Hollywood norms and is a fabulous testament to the notion that films for women, by women and starring women can be a ticket-selling sensation.

‘Barbie’ got off to a massive start by raking in 356.2 million dollars in its opening weekend. To date, it has grossed about 459 million dollars in the US and 572 million dollars internationally since its premiere on July 21. The hot-pink ‘Warner Bros. Pictures’ movie is now the second biggest release of the year, only behind Nintendo’s ‘The Super Mario Bros’.

Though ‘Barbie’ isn’t the first directorial success of a female filmmaker, ‘Wonder Woman’, directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot, raked in a cool 823 million dollars worldwide. ‘Captain Marvel’, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, soared to a mind-boggling 1.1 billion dollars. The ‘Twilight’ saga, with Catherine Hardwicke at the helm, brought in 408 million dollars.

However, before ‘Barbie’ strutted onto the scene, even ‘Warner Bros.’ was giving the side-eye to Gerwig’s pink-tinted vision, tossing around doubts about a movie that defied conventional expectations.