Barbie movie beats 15-year box office record set by Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight

The Barbie movie is continuing to break records including beating one held for 15 years by Christopher Nolan’s superhero blockbuster The Dark Knight.

Greta Gerwig’s live-action take on the iconic doll owned by toymakers Mattel, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, opened in cinemas on July 21. It premiered on the same day as Nolan’s latest film Oppenheimer, with the two films enjoying a joint publicity storm dubbed “Barbenheimer”.

As reported by Variety, Barbie took in $26m (￡20m) at the US box office on Monday (24 July).

The figure makes it the highest-ever Monday gross for a film released by Warner Bros. The previous record holder was Nolan’s Batman sequel The Dark Knight, which made $24.6m (unadjusted for inflation).

Barbie has proved a huge financial hit for Warner Bros, taking in $162m (￡125m) in the US and a total of $337m (￡261m) globally over its opening weekend.

This makes it the biggest opening weekend of the year to date, beating animated computer game adaptation The Super Mario Bros Movie.

Oppenheimer, meanwhile, failed to match Barbie, taking $80.5m (￡62m) in the US and $174.2m (￡135m) globally, but has still been hailed as a hit.

The epic, which is set over three timelines, follows the life of nuclear scientist J Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), often described as the “Father of the Atomic Bomb”.