Take a look at the trailer for the upcoming film 'Barbie' directed by Greta Gerwig, starring Margot Robbie.
Video / Warner Bros. Pictures
Greta Gerwig has been a big name associated with the upcoming Barbie movie and all its ensuing excitement. However, she wasn’t the first person to try and bring the “life in plastic” concept to the screen.
Sony initially bought the rights to the Barbie film back in 2014 and spent years trying to recruit actors and screenwriters to take part in the project. Hollywood stars such as Anne Hathaway and Amy Schumer were said to be in the mix, the latter of whom had to pass up the opportunity due to “scheduling conflicts” in 2017.
However, Schumer recently revealed on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live that she felt the initial script wasn’t “feminist and cool enough”.
Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody was set to write the movie in her “idiosyncratic writing style,” along with Schumer’s “crass” comedic flair. However, Cody exited the production in 2018, revealing to ScreenCrush that she “failed so hard at the project”.
“I was literally incapable of turning in a Barbie draft,” she added. “God knows I tried.”
Now, in a recent interview with GQ, the screenwriter shed light on the issues she faced while trying to imagine the original concept of ‘an anti-Barbie,’ which Cody said, “made a lot of sense given the feminist rhetoric of ten years ago”.
Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie attend the "Barbie" Celebration Party at Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo / Getty Images
“I think I know why I sh*t the bed,” she told the publisher. “When I was first hired for [Barbie], I don’t think the culture had not embraced the femme or the bimbo as valid feminist archetypes yet.
“If you look up ‘Barbie’ on TikTok you’ll find this wonderful subculture that celebrates the feminine, but in 2014, taking this skinny blonde white doll and making her into a heroine was a tall order.”
Cody went on to say that she felt like she did not have “the freedom then to write something that was faithful to the iconography”.
“They wanted a girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie, and I couldn’t figure it out because that’s not what Barbie is,” she added.
During this time, The Lego Movie was gaining major traction after hitting screens under Warner Bros. in 2014. Codey remembers hearing “endless references to [the film] in development,” which affected the screenwriter’s mojo as she tried to emulate the same style, which she dubbed “meta.”
Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are seen rollerblading on the set of "Barbie". Photo / Getty Images
“Any time I came up with something meta, it was too much like what [The Lego Movie] had done,” Cody shared. “It was a roadblock for me, but now enough time has passed that they can just cast Will Ferrell [who played the evil tyrant President Business] as the antagonist in a real-life Barbie movie and nobody cares.”
Gerwig expressed her own concerns about making the doll-inspired movie, telling Vogue in December that she worried the film would be a “career-ender.”
“It was something that was exciting because it was terrifying,” she said. “I think that was a big part of it, like: ‘Oh, no, Barbie.’… It felt like vertigo, starting to write it, like: ‘Where do you even begin, and what would be the story?’…”
