Two years after the success of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, an animated movie is now in the works!
According to Deadline, Illumination, the studio behind the Minions franchise, and Mattel Studios are producing the first-ever Barbie animated movie for the big screen.
No further information about the cast or the plot has been released.
The 2023 film, which starred Margot Robbie as the titular character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, grossed over $1.44 billion worldwide and dominated pop culture for months on end.
Barbie was the highest grossing movie of 2023 and it’s also one of the highest-grossing films of all time, along with the highest-grossing film for a female director.
Speaking to the ABC’S 7:30 program in 2023, Margot said it was Barbie‘s polarising success that initially drew her to the project.
“People feel really strongly about Barbie. Some people love Barbie. Some people have a lot of problems with Barbie. But everyone has an associated memory with Barbie,” she told the outlet. “It just felt like we could ignite something with it […] it seems like over the last 64 years, it hasn’t taken much for Barbie to ignite conversation or sometimes, you know, revolutions or protests.”
Together with screenwriter Greta Gerwig, she convinced Mattel to let them take some risks.
“We have to be up-front and let you know that we’re not going to shy away from the problematic parts of this,” Margot said she told the company.
“Otherwise, it’s not a movie we’re interested in making. But it will come from a place of love, it will come from a place of respect, because I absolutely have respect for anyone that can make a toy [with] sustained popularity for 60-something years.”
After the script was completed, Greta knew she wanted to direct it too.
“It felt complicated enough, sticky enough, strange enough, that maybe there could be something interesting there to be discovered,” Greta told The Guardian. “I kind of had two thoughts: I love this and I can’t bear it if anyone else makes it. And: they’ll never let us make this movie.”
Greta hoped the film would make people feel “relieved of the tightrope”.
“We ask ourselves — not just as women, men too — that we walk this impossible tightrope of being perfect,” she explained. “Barbie has always been a symbol of this thing that you could never reach because she physically couldn’t stand up if she were a human being. So I wanted it to almost invert that formula and find a way that it gave you permission to just be yourself and know that that’s enough.”
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