If you haven’t ventured out to theaters yet to watch Barbie and are waiting for it to hit streaming, you’ll have to be a little patient: it’ll hit Warner Bros.’ streaming service, Max (previously known as HBO Max), sometime this fall.
Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav announced the news during today’s Q4 earnings call, during which he also predicted a return-to-work date sometime in September amid Hollywood’s current strikes.
“We really believe in the motion picture window,” Zaslav said. “Let this movie go to the motion picture window, play it up, build up that brand, then have it go into PVOD. Take it through these windows of economics that have worked forever, and we think work extremely well. And then put it on Max. And when it goes on Max, we think it’ll have a very good impact and that’ll be in the Fall.”
"Let this movie go to the motion picture window, play it up, build up that brand, then have it go into PVOD.
Zaslav’s comments on the theatrical window are a little more significant given Warner Bros.’ history with the theater industry. In 2021, the company generated controversy by announcing that that year’s entire theatrical slate – including Dune, The Suicide Squad, Mortal Kombat, The Matrix Resurrections, and more – would hit HBO Max the same day they debut in theaters. This, of course, happened during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, but was still an unprecedented move that shook up the traditional theatrical window.
Still, Warner Bros. and other studios have since returned to more traditional windows after lockdown requirements eased. WB has gone back to giving it at least 45 days from their theatrical debut before putting their biggest releases on Max.
While the return to theaters has seen mixed results for WB (especially for DC movies like The Flash and Black Adam), Barbie in particular has seen astonishing, record-breaking success in only its first two weekends of release. At press time, it’s currently made $811 million worldwide (per Box Office Mojo) and is well on pace to become the second film of 2023, after the Super Mario Bros. Movie, to cross the $1 billion mark.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
