While it absolutely, 1000 per cent takes a village to make a blockbuster film, a great deal of praise and kudos should go to Margot Robbie who not only played the lead role in Barbie, but also pitched the concept to the studio heads and produced the film.
And never you mind, Margot Robbie stans, your girl is being sufficiently compensated for her hard work, according to the leaked salary tea we’ve just sipped on, as spilled by Variety.
Three insiders told the publication that the Aussie babe will be copping roughly USD$50 million (AUD$77 million) in salary and box office bonuses.
Cha-ching!
During the iconique press tour for the film, Robbie revealed to Collider that she was instrumental in getting the project off the ground by convincing the top dogs at the studio that the film would go gangbusters.
Robbie said she likened the project to “dinosaurs and [Steven] Spielberg” in a green-light meeting.
“Pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years,” she explained. “And I was like, ‘And now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig.
“And I think I told them that it’d make a billion dollars, which maybe I was overselling, but we had a movie to make, okay?!”
Gerwig, the movie’s director and co-writer, will also receive ‘yuge bonuses, as she should, given that Barbie has now become the first female-directed film to surpass $1 billion at the global box office.
Following its July 20 release, Barbie experienced the largest opening weekend for a female director of all time, coming in at $356 million, globally. Given the brains behind the now-iconic movie had to fight tooth and manicured nail for Barbie to even be made, I’d say they delivered and then some.
The film is also the second highest-grossing release by Warner Bros. ever, behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 — I mean, that one’s gonna be pretty hard to beat!
Perhaps a Barbie sequel will have the power to knock the last Potter flick off its perch?
