Barbie dethrones The Super Mario Bros. Movie and becomes the highest grossing film of 2023

Barbie has officially become the highest-grossing film of 2023 after overtaking The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

The Greta Gerwig flick has been steadily rising through the box office charts ever since it premiered in mid-July.

It has so far been a big year for cinema and Barbie was going to have to pull out all the stops to get to the top.

There was the third and final chapter of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise as well as the 10th movie in the Fast and Furious saga.

Big-name titles like The Little Mermaid, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have also all raked it in at the global box office.

However, Nintendo's incredible film about Mario and his quest to rescue Princess Peach was 2023's favourite film...up until last weekend.

It took a month and a half for Barbie to topple it and take the crown of the biggest financial win.

It has now brought in a whopping $1.381 billion at the global box office, compared to Super Mario Bros' $1.359 billion.

The third film on the 2023 biggest sellers is Oppenheimer, which was released on the same day as Barbie.

Barbie has set an impressive number of records since it was released.

At the beginning of August, it became the all-time highest-grossing film directed by a solo woman.

Barbie overtook 2017's Wonder Woman, which raked in USD $822.9 million.

It had the biggest box office opening weekend of the year after it took home $155 million despite having a budget of $145 million.

Warner Bros. Pictures

It has also seen the biggest opening for a movie about a toy, the biggest opening ever for Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and the biggest opening weekend for a film that isn't a sequel, remake, or superhero movie.

“One of the really exciting things about Barbie is that it’s a big, pink, feminine movie, and it’s doing these huge numbers,” said Kylie Eaton, co-chair of the Alliance of Woman Directors, as per the Wall Street Journal.

Michael O’Leary, president and CEO of the National Association of Theatre Owners, said it has ‘reawakened’ the public's interest in going to the movies again, as numbers have soared the way they did pre-pandemic.

He added people are now looking forward to ‘sitting in a theatre with world-class projection and sound systems, having an immersive experience alongside other people’, as per CNN.