Barbie bonanza continues at the box office as Greta Gerwig film keeps breaking records

Barbie has gone from strength to strength, as Greta Gerwig’s film continues to dominate the US box office in its second weekend.

Released on Friday 21 July alongside Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Barbie has held unusually strongly in cinemas one week after it was released.

The comedy, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, took in a massive $93m (£72m) in its second weekend, according to studio estimates on Sunday (30 July).

Barbie has seen remarkably sustained business following its year-best $162m (£126m) opening, with ticket sales dipped only 43 per cent.

The film has also outpaced Nolan’s 2008 superhero film The Dark Knight to notch the best first two weeks in cinemas of any Warner Bros release.

It comes after Gerwig’s Mattel film broke the opening weekend record for a female director in the US. Patty Jenkins’ 2017 movie Wonder Woman held the previous record with a $103.3m (£80.3m) domestic opening.

Barbie has rapidly accumulated $351.4m (£273.3m) in screenings in the US and Canada, a rate that will soon make it the biggest box office hit of the summer. Every day it’s played, Barbie has made at least $20m (£15.5m).

You can read The Independent’s five-star review of Barbie here.

Oppenheimer again landed in second place with an estimated $46.2m (£35.9m). Nolan’s three-hour biopic held especially strong in its second weekend, with sales decreasing just 44 per cent, allowing it to accrue $174.1m (£135.4m) thus far.

You can find The Independent’s review of Nolan’s film here.

The week’s top new release, Disney’s Haunted Mansion, was easily overshadowed by the enduring hype around Barbie and Oppenheimer. The film, which cost about $150m (£116m) to make, debuted with $24m (£18.6m) domestically and $9m (£7m) in overseas sales.

Haunted Mansion stars an ensemble of LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Rosario Dawson, but struggled to overcome mediocre reviews.

While cinemas being flush with moviegoers has been a huge boon to a film industry still recovering ground it lost during the pandemic, it’s been tougher sledding for Tom Cruise, the so-called saviour of the movies last summer with Top Gun: Maverick.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I, starring Cruise and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, grossed $10.7m (£83.2m) million in its third weekend. Its domestic total stands at $139.2m (£108.2m).

Barbie and Oppenheimer are in cinemas now.

Additional reporting by Associated Press.