‘Barbie’: New Trailer Out; Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig Take Us Through BarbieLand, Soundtrack Artist List Revealed
To say that it’s been quite a journey for Hollywood to finally make a Barbie live-action film might be quite an understatement. The film underwent two different iterations, with Amy Schumer and Anne Hathaway attached at different points to play the titular doll, all before Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap was attached to the project.
In a new interview with Vogue Magazine, the Babylon actress went deep into how the movie came to be, from the very early days to its current status. In 2018, Robbie asked for a meeting with Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz to pitch their version of a Barbie movie, and though they didn’t have a specific concept for what the movie would look like, they said they wanted to honor the 60-year history of the brand while also paying respect to those who have big reservations about what it means to society. The project was eventually set up at Warner Bros., where the production company had a first-look deal, and Robbie went ahead and reached out to Greta Gerwig.
Gerwig accepted the job, on the condition that she and her husband, Noah Baumbach, would write the screenplay together, which would receive no oversight from the studio. They wanted complete creative control over the film, and though, it took a long time to convince two giant companies like WB and Mattel, they got away with it. No one saw a page of the script until it was finished, and pretty much everything they wrote, Gerwig eventually shot — apparently, except for a page-one joke that had Robbie and her husband’s jaws hit the floor. (Tom Ackerley, Robbie’s spouse, is part of LuckyChap’s founding trio, which also includes Josey McNamara; Robbie and Ackerley are producers on the film, while McNamara is an executive producer.) Said Robbie about their first time reading the script:
“I think the first thing I said to Tom was, This is so genius. It is such a shame that we’re never going to be able to make this movie.”
We’ve already seen the opening of the film — it’s the spoof on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that was featured in the December trailer and narrated by Helen Mirren, featuring a group of young girls breaking their now-obsolete dolls once they discover Margot Robbie’s gigantic Barbie. As it’s also hinted at in the new trailer at the bottom of this article, Mirren adds that Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him. The new trailer also gives us a new hilarious look at Gosling’s Ken, and according to Robbie, the film features “the greatest version of Ryan Gosling ever put on screen.”
The film, as we know, will feature multiple Barbies and multiple Kens. This was an idea that came to Greta Gerwig after walking through Mattel and learning that most of the dolls they have are simply called Barbie:
“Now all of the dolls are Barbie. All of them are Barbie, and Barbie is everyone. Philosophically, I was like, Well, now that’s interesting.”
Robbie plays Stereotypical Barbie, but there are so many more actresses portraying different versions of the character, including Emma Mackey, Dua Lipa, Alexandra Shipp, Kate McKinnon, etc. One actress, in particular, they looked at, but ultimately couldn’t make it happen, was Gal Gadot, as Robbie explained:
“Gal Gadot is Barbie energy. Because Gal Gadot is so impossibly beautiful, but you don’t hate her for being that beautiful, because she’s so genuinely sincere, and she’s so enthusiastically kind, that it’s almost dorky. It’s like right before being a dork.”
But what is that Barbie energy? Cracking down what Barbie was in the story required a journey of its own, as Margot Robbie explained:
“You know how you have a voice in your head all the time? This woman, she doesn’t have that voice in her head.”
A key aspect they also felt like they had to address was her sexuality. But when thinking about it for a few seconds, it all clicked in for the actress:
“I’m like, Okay, she’s a doll. She’s a plastic doll. She doesn’t have organs. If she doesn’t have organs, she doesn’t have reproductive organs. If she doesn’t have reproductive organs, would she even feel sexual desire? No, I don’t think she could. She is sexualized. But she should never be sexy. People can project sex onto her. Yes, she can wear a short skirt, but because it’s fun and pink. Not because she wanted you to see her butt.”
There are also multiple Kens in the story, with Ryan Gosling playing the main one. He said the following about his character:
“It would be very un-Ken of me to talk about Ken. [Margot Robbie] left a pink present with a pink bow, from Barbie to Ken, every day while we were filming. They were all beach-related. Like puka shells, or a sign that says ‘Pray for surf.’ Because Ken’s job is just beach. I’ve never quite figured out what that means. But I felt like she was trying to help Ken understand, through these gifts that she was giving.”
As we see in the trailer, the story will take Barbie and Ken to the real world, with the second half of the movie seemingly becoming a fish-out-of-water story for the two of them. In it, Will Ferrell will play Mattel’s CEO, who Margot Robbie describes as “Misguided but in an innocent way. He just cares about little girls and their dreams in the least creepy way possible.”
The film definitely promises one hell of a journey for us as the viewer and for the characters as well. At the time the interview was conducted, there were three days left of pickups to be done, and the film is currently in the final stages of post-production, ready to be released on July 21. As the final stretch of the marketing campaign kicks in, and in addition to revealing the main trailer, Rolling Stone has also exclusively revealed new details about the soundtrack, namely who will be credited in it. Now, their report came out shortly before Warner Bros. confirmed that Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice are partnering with Aqua to perform a new version of “Barbie Girl”. Here is the rest of the artists participating in the soundtrack:
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And finally, here is the new trailer:
Barbie will rollerblade into theaters on July 21. Greta Gerwig directs from a screenplay she co-wrote with her husband.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
