Heartbreaking news from Hollywood: Lena Dunham is no longer involved in the forthcoming Polly Pocket movie. Speaking to the New Yorker, Dunham revealed she dropped out of the project because “I don’t think I have that in me.”
Clearly, there is a lot to unpack here. The first is, Christ, they’re going to make a Polly Pocket movie. People in Hollywood saw the success of Barbie and immediately started scouting around for other vaguely nostalgic toys that they could make a movie out of. And the fact that they initially chose Lena Dunham to write, direct and produce points to an even greater cynicism, as if some otherworldly algorithm had analysed Barbie and determined that the secret key to replicating its historic box office success was simply “toy plus feminism”.
