Greta Gerwig should be feeling closer to fine these days. With just three weeks in theatres, Barbie is set to sail past $US1 billion ($1.5 billion) in global ticket sales, breaking a record for female directors that was previously held by Patty Jenkins, who helmed Wonder Woman.

Barbie, which Gerwig directed and co-wrote, added another $US53 million ($80 million) from 4,178 North American locations this weekend according to studio estimates on Sunday.

The film led and produced by Australia’s Margot Robbie has been comfortably seated in first place for three weeks and it’s hardly finished yet.

Warner Bros said the film will cross one billion dollars before the end of the day.

“As distribution chiefs, we’re not often rendered speechless by a film’s performance, but Barbillion has blown even our most optimistic predictions out of the water,” said Jeff Goldstein and Andrew Cripps, who oversee domestic and international distribution for the studio, in a joint statement.

In modern box office history, just 53 movies have made over a billion, not accounting for inflation, and Barbie is now the biggest to be directed by one woman, surpassing Wonder Woman’s $US821.8 million global total.

Three movies that were co-directed by women are still ahead of Barbie, including Frozen ($US1.3 billion dollars) and Frozen 2 ($1.45 billion) both co-directed by Jennifer Lee and Captain Marvel ($1.1 billion dollars), co-directed by Anna Boden.

Barbie has passed Captain Marvel domestically with $US459.4 million versus $US426.8 million thereby claiming the North American record for live-action movies directed by women.

New competition came this weekend in the form of the animated, PG-rated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and the Jason Statham shark sequel, Meg 2: The Trench, both of which were neck-and-neck with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, also in its third weekend, for the second-place spot.

Meg 2 ultimately managed to sneak ahead and land in second place with a $30 million opening weekend from 3,503 locations.
Third place went to Oppenheimer, which added $US28.7 million from 3,612 locations in North America, bringing its domestic total to $US228.6 million.

— AAP