Warner Bros’ Barbie, written and directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie as leads, is one of the year’s most anticipated films. If this isn’t enough to convince you, we’ve got another reason to get excited! Sim Liu, star of Marvel’s Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings, is in talks to join the cast! Birds of Prey and Suicide Squad’s Robbie will play the beloved Mattel character Barbie, and La La Land’s Ryan Gosling is set to play her counterpart Ken. The recent additions to the cast include Ugly Betty and Superstore star America Ferrara. It’s not been shared what role Ferrera will be playing in the world of Barbie.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Gerwig is directing the film from a script she co-wrote with her partner in life and filmmaking, Noah Baumbach. Gerwig first joined the project in 2019 as a script co-writer with Baumbach. Later in September 2021, she officially signed on to direct the upcoming live-action film about the famous Mattel character Barbie.
Barbie has come a long way to get to where it is now, and with this news, it appears that the film will be made this time. At one point, Anne Hathaway was expected to play the lead, then Amy Schumer, before eventually falling to our Harley Quinn. Schumer was also reportedly set to co-write the script with Hilary Winston from Community before it was given to Gerwig and Baumbach.
The plot details of Barbie are completely under wraps, but given Gerwig and Baumbach’s film history, it wouldn’t surely be the obvious pink fantasy of the Mattel character.
In a recent profile for Vogue, Robbie discussed the unexpected aspects of a Barbie film directed by Gerwig.”But with that comes a lot of exciting ways to attack it,” Robbie says. “People generally hear Barbie and think, ‘I know what that movie is going to be,’ and then they hear that Greta Gerwig is writing and directing it, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I don’t…’”
In 2019, Gerwig wrote and directed Little Women, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic of the same title, starring Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Timothee Chalamet, Emma Watson, and Ronan. She made a radical change in the ending of a classic like Little Women.
In an interview with OprahMag, she said, “I wanted to give Louisa May Alcott an ending she might have liked.” Gerwig received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for Little Women, along with six other Oscar nominations for the film. Hence, Mattel’s Barbie in the hands of Gerwig is the most anticipated film of the year. We can’t wait to see what feminist twist the ‘First Couple of Film’ has given to a character like Barbie. The film is slated to hit theatres sometime in 2023.