The Barbie movie is one of the biggest movies of the year. It’s been out barely over a weekend and it’s already one of the highest-grossing films of 2023 thanks to the biggest domestic opening weekend of the year. It has to feel pretty good for all involved, but possibly not more so for Mattel, the company that spent years trying to get their doll turned into a movie. Not only did it get done, but they clearly made the right choices regarding who should make the film, which is important because there were lots of other choices.
The Barbie movie existed at two different studios prior to arriving at Warner Bros. and had at least two different big names attached to star in the film. It souls like there were a lot of different pitches for what a Barbie movie should be. Robbie Brenner, the head of Mattel’s film division recently told Variety that while some of the other porches for Barbie were “interesting,” some were downright “terrible,” and it doesn’t sound like anybody was very excited about any ideas until Greta Gerwig came along. Brenner explained…
Before the idea of Greta came up, we went out to a bunch of writers just to hear different ideas, and we heard a bunch of pitches. Some were interesting and different and outside of the box and weird and what you would expect and terrible. I mean, the whole gamut. But there was nothing that ever felt like it was worth making a movie about until this idea of Greta directing the movie.
On the one hand, Barbie has been around for so long and has done so much that there must be a limitless number of ideas for a film. It sounds like Mattel heard them all. Most of the time when we see major IP turned into a movie, it's played pretty safe, and a lot of the pitches were likely exactly that. It's clear Mattel was open to more radical ideas, and it sounds like Gerwig wasn't the only person who had one, but for whatever reason, the other ideas didn't work.
The Barbie movie had previously been at Universal before the rights to the character went to Sony. While there, the first big name attached to star as Barbie was Amy Schumer, which one has to assume had to have been one of the more “interesting” takes on the character. If nothing else it showed that Mattel was looking at ideas that were outside the box.
Eventually, Schumer dropped out and Anne Hathaway was attached to star, but that was as far as things got at Sony. Clearly, there were issues coming up with a story as the project simply sat in limbo the entire time. It sounds like they talked to a lot of different writers about different ideas, and while not every idea was terrible, nothing that came before Greta Gerwig seemed to click.
Clearly, it was worth the wait, however. While Greta Gerwig certainly seemed like an interesting choice herself to direct a Barbie movie, Mattel and WB certainly must have seen something in her pitch, and to their credit, they choose quite wisely.
