Barbie

1. It became the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman. Barbie grossed over $1.44 billion worldwide, surpassing Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman ($822M) to claim the record. Greta Gerwig also became the first solo female director to cross the $1 billion mark at the box office.

2. The production used so much fluorescent pink paint it caused a global shortage. Production designer Sarah Greenwood reportedly depleted Rosco's entire global supply of fluorescent pink paint while building Barbieland. The paint company had to scramble to produce more to meet demand from other film productions.

3. Ryan Gosling learned guitar for his "I'm Just Ken" performance. The showstopping musical number — performed largely live on set — required Gosling to practice for months. He became genuinely proficient enough on guitar that the performance needed minimal playback assistance during filming.

4. Margot Robbie trained to walk on her tiptoes to simulate Barbie's arched feet. Since Barbie dolls canonically have feet permanently arched for heels, Robbie worked with movement coaches for weeks to master walking on the balls of her feet — so that in the scene where Barbie's feet go flat, audiences could viscerally feel the difference.

5. The film had over 100 different Barbies and Kens on screen. The production cast dozens of actors to portray different versions of Barbie and Ken throughout Barbieland, requiring extensive coordination to ensure each character had a distinct look and personality while maintaining visual coherence across scenes.

6. "Barbenheimer" generated a record-breaking combined opening weekend. When Barbie and Oppenheimer opened on the same day (July 21, 2023), their combined domestic opening weekend was approximately $244 million — the biggest combined opening for two films released simultaneously in cinema history, defying all industry predictions that the films would hurt each other's performance.

7. The screenplay went through years of development before Gerwig was brought in. Barbie had been in development at Warner Bros. since 2009, passing through multiple writers and directors including Diablo Cody, Jenny Bicks, Hilary Winston, and Amy Schumer before Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were given creative control — and Gerwig's feminist reimagining transformed it from a straightforward family comedy into a sharp cultural critique.