When it comes to the road to blockbuster glory, some projects are willed, some happen instantaneously, while others go through a long development hell. That’s just what happens when you’re perfecting toward a hopeful billion-grossing title.
In the case of Mattel’s Barbie, it was arguably a 14-year journey that began at Universal. It stands to reason that the toy company would be fiercely protective when it came to the feature take of its 64-year-old doll that generates a reported $3 billion annually in revenue. For what was conceived as America’s Sweetheart has been tossed about, and evolved with the changing times, switching up her stereotypes and outfits from prom queen to flight attendant to Mad Men secretary to astronaut. A doll that was deemed iconic in the 1970s-era of pinups like Loni Anderson and Farrah Fawcett endured a backlash as being an inappropriate role model for young girls with her high heels and skinny physique. This despite Mattel pushing the female-empowerment aspects of Barbie over time.
How to fashion a five-quad movie around that?
At the end of the day, Mattel let its hair down and poked fun at — and owned — all of Barbie’s hang-ups, thanks to star-producer Margot Robbie and the pic’s director and co-writer Greta Gerwig. It worked, with the movie opening to $162M domestic and $356M global. For Robbie, Gerwig and co-star Ryan Gosling, Barbie repped a record start at the box office.
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As one source close to production says, “If you made Barbie in the 1980s, it would have fallen into the patriarchy.” Leave it to Little Women and Ladybird director Gerwig to liberate Barbie, an effort that is the best stateside debut ever for a movie by female filmmaker.
Barbie first landed at Universal in 2009 with The Greatest Showman producer Laurence Mark attached. Studios always have been gaga for the character, knowing she would appeal equally from young girls to grandmothers. However, the real noise for the feature adaptation of the doll came when she arrived at Sony in April 2014.
Mattel held a beauty contest for the rights, one which the Amy Pascal-led studio at the time and producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald won with Sex and the City scribe Jenny Bicks attached. The intent back then was to have the movie into production by year’s end. Sony was gazing at the success Warner Bros had with The Lego Movie, which straddled the kid and twentysomething demos and ultimately grossed close to a half-billion worldwide. Bicks and Parkes and MacDonald’s reported angle for the project focused on Barbie using her personal and professional skills to step into the lives of others and improve them, almost like a modern-day Mary Poppins.
The movie’s costs would be manageable with the casting of fresh-faced young actresses who would grow into the franchise, much in the same way that Harry Potter and The Hunger Games were born. By March 2015, Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody was rewriting Barbie. By December 2015, Sony had created another beauty contest for itself with three drafts in play by Lindsey Beer, Bert Royal and Hilary Winston. A June 2017 release was eyed.
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By December 2016, stand-up comedian, TV personality and Trainwreck actress and screenwriter Amy Schumer became attached for what would be a PG version by summer 2018 with Winston’s script and rewrite by Schumer and her sister Kim Caramele.
Looking back the conceit of that Barbie at Sony sounds a lot like what we saw this weekend, read a fish-out-of-water story reminiscent of Splash and Big, whereby Barbie gets kicked out of Barbieland because she’s not perfect enough, is a bit eccentric and doesn’t quite fit the mold. She then goes on an adventure in the real world and by the time she returns to Barbieland to save it, she has gained the realization that perfection comes on the inside, not the outside, and that the key to happiness is belief in oneself, free of the obligation to adhere to some unattainable standard of perfection. Mattel at the time reportedly signed off on that take. However, in March 2017, Schumer said bye-bye to Barbie — which she initially said was due to “scheduling conflicts.” But in a June interview on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, she admitted it was “creative differences.” Schumer doesn’t have any sour grapes and celebrated Barbenheimer on social media recently quipping, ““Really enjoyed Barbie and Oppenheimer but I think I should have played Emily Blunts [Oppenheimer] role…Do better Hollywood.”
By that summer, Anne Hathaway had stepped in with a touch-up by Oceans Eight scribe Olivia Milch; the conceit of Barbie’s exodus from Barbieland reportedly still being the crux.
Barbie as the New Superhero
Jaws dropped in October 2018 when the news hit that Margot Robbie and her LuckyChap were circling Barbie and it had landed at Warners. The headlines occurred a month after Oscar-nominated Dallas Buyers Club producer Robbie Brenner took the reign on Mattel’s new film division. What happened? Essentially the rights lapsed on Barbie at Sony, and the new CEO and Chairman at Mattel, Ynon Kreiz, wanted them in an effort to build an IP-driven entertainment company. Per sources, Kreiz’s priority was to make a good movie versus selling dolls; in the end the movie would elevate the Mattel brand. We’ve been told that Robbie was passionate to play and produce Barbie, and approached Mattel, however, she didn’t see the project as just another breakout movie for girls, rather a five-quad film that could pull in everyone. If a Marvel dude superhero movie could be built for the masses, why not one with a female lead? Robbie’s vision won Mattel over. In PostTrak exits, Barbie saw a turnout of 68% women, 32% guys with 26% of the crowd taking a date or spouse to the cinema.
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At the time that Robbie became attached, it was rumored that Wonder Woman filmmaker Patty Jenkins was kicking the tires. At Sundance 2019 we asked about her interest in Barbie: While there were no serious talks, there were some conversations, however, her schedule didn’t permit her to any type of commitment.
Given LuckyChap had a first look deal at Warners, Barbie hopped in her sports car and zipped from Culver City to the Burbank lot. Warner Bros-then motion picture chief Toby Emmerich and President of Production and Development, Courtenay Valenti gave the early package an immediate ‘yes.’ In what could be an $800M to $1 billion global success here for Barbie, it’s important to give credit where credit is due and that’s to the former production execs who were at the company.
Warner Bros. marketing architect Josh Goldstine and his team can also take ‘atta boys’ and ‘atta girls’ for launching a hysterical trailer which morphed into a social media meme frenzy while domestic distribution boss Jeff Goldstein (who’s celebrating his 45th anniversary at Warner Bros, today) and International distribution chief Andrew Cripps chose a rich late July global day-and-date weekend that was well spaced from other family films in a crowded summer.
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Robbie and Kreiz also reportedly had a shared idea that this would be an unconventional Barbie movie, one which wasn’t an advertisement for dolls, but something a little meta. For Robbie there was nobody else to helm and write this screenplay than Ladybird and Little Women filmmaker Greta Gerwig.
Gerwig, we’re told, was initially weary about directing and only wanted to write. Her terms were that her partner Noah Baumbach would co-write and they wouldn’t do a treatment, rather turn in a script and present it to the studio from there. The duo became attached in July 2019. Their take would play on two levels, not just for kids, but also be sophisticated and subversive. Not to mention it was always going to hysterically address some of society’s hang-ups with Barbie, i.e. her fashion icon status and the women’s lib backlash. Warner Bros. marketing hit the nail on the head in the trailer’s slogan: “If you love Barbie, if you hate Barbie, then this movie is for you.”
We’re told that despite the set-up sounding similar to the Sony drafts, Gerwig and Baumbach were never privy to those versions and started anew. After Gerwig finished the script, LuckyChap, Mattel and Warners rallied the 3x Oscar nominee to direct. The first pass by Gerwig and Baumbach, Deadline is told, wasn’t that far from the final shooting script.
For everyone there was only one Ken and that was Ryan Gosling. He initially passed, however, it wasn’t about money with him, rather the Drive actor being concerned about how on-the-nose the casting was. He gave in after producers and execs made an aggressive push for him, saying that the movie couldn’t be made without him.
With a reported production cost of $128M net, there was no comp to justify Barbie‘s P&L for Warner Bros. They were going into uncharted waters, but that’s the story of a million movie breakouts. With Flash destined for trouble due to its tabloid-laden star Ezra Miller, we hear Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav at a company retreat delared “Code Name: Barbie Summer” and that all divisions would fire on all cylinders to work synergistically in promoting the tentpole including an HGTV and Food network Barbie-theme episodes.
Plotting against former Tenet and Inception, Warner Bros filmmaking vet Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer wasn’t a slight on behalf of the studio, rather something it observed back in 2008 when WB opened his The Dark Knight: It was possible for a five-quad movie to share the marquee with a strong female title, at the time that being Uni’s Mamma Mia! While Dark Knight would open to $158.4M domestic and be a behemoth at $584.9M domestic, $1 billion global, Mamma Mia! was a destination for women that summer debuting to $27.7M and finaling at $144.1M domestic, $609M-plus worldwide.
The Barbenheimer, girls versus boys of it all, well that’s just a case of lagniappe in reverse, the consumers giving the studio marketing execs more than they bargained for; whereby the promotion of two movies blled into the zeitgeist and took on a life of its own. Never before have there been two movies at the domestic box office that opened to north of $100M, and a second at $50M+. Oppenheimer‘s revised domestic is $82M+, with global at $180.3M.
There’s an argument out there that Barbie made Oppenheimer look good, that she was the tide to lift all boats. That would be a discredit to Universal’s genius promo efforts of positioning a 3-hour talking period biopic as a thriller.
However, with two movies combined opening to north of a half billion worldwide, you better believe that two competing studios won’t ever be scared again to date two tentpoles against each other.
Justin Kroll contributed to this report.