Talks of a live-action Barbie movie have been circulating since 2009. While the romance movie seems to have gathered pace in recent years, with filming reportedly set to begin in March 2022, it could have looked a lot different.
Comedy movie star Amy Schumer was tipped to write the film as well as playing the beloved doll in 2016 — but she later departed from the project. Now, in a new interview with the Hollywood Reporter, the rom-com actress revealed what caused her to rethink her involvement in the project.
“They definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it, the only way I was interested in doing it,” she said. According to Schumer, while she wrote Barbie to be an ambitious inventor, the studio wanted the invention in question to be high heels made of Jell-O. She added that the different visions she and the studio had only became more apparent when they gifted her a pair of Manolo Blahniks “The idea that that’s just what every woman must want, right there, I should have gone, ‘You’ve got the wrong gal,'” she added.
The Barbie movie is now set to star Margot Robbie in the titular role. Although the plot synopsis is broadly similar to how it was originally — with Barbie being expelled from ‘Barbieland’ for not being perfect enough — the DCEU actress said that fans should expect the unexpected.
“People immediately have an idea of, ‘Oh, Margot is playing Barbie, I know what that is’, but our goal is to be like, ‘Whatever you’re thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different — the thing you didn’t know you wanted’,” she said in a recent Hollywood Reporter interview.
Robbie’s production company LuckyChap Entertainment will be producing the film, while Greta Gerwig, who is known for award-winning drama movies like Little Woman and Lady Bird, is on board to direct.
To get a taste of what to expect from the Barbie movie, you can watch Gerwig’s Little Women and Lady Bird on streaming service Netflix.