Barbie has broken Avatar's 14-year reign as the most successful movie in Irish box office history after it made €8,854,036 just one month and one day after its release.
The Greta Gerwig movie, starring Margot Robbie as the famous doll and Ryan Gosling as Ken, has also surpassed Titanic, which made €8,253,258 in Ireland after its release in 1997, according to the Irish Film and Television News website.
James Cameron’s Avatar at €8,702,770 has long reigned as the most successful movie ever released in the Republic of Ireland but the story of the plastic fantastic doll with a heart has now topped the aquatic epic by over €151k after four weeks at the top of the Irish box office.
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IFTN says that Barbie’s success can be partly attributed to the "Barbenheimer", a viral marketing phenomenon that saw movie fans attending both Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s - very different - Oppenheimer on their joint opening day on 21 July last.
Approximately 799,000 admissions were recorded in Irish cinemas in the two films' first week of release, says IFTN.
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Oppenheimer has now accumulated €5.5m at the Irish box office, holding second place in the top ten a month after its release.
Commenting on Barbie’s wild success, Eoin Wrexon, CEO of cinema advertising company Pearl and Dean Ireland, said, "To see Barbie on track to rank as one of the biggest films of all time at the Irish box office shows how cinema has returned stronger than ever."
