Fans excitedly await Greta Gerwig's newest Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie at the end of July, a movie that features an iconic doll that has a long history of trying to be written onto the big screen. In 2018, Sony Pictures originally tried to write a Barbie movie with actress Amy Schumer and Oscar-award-winning writer Diablo Cody, but they couldn't quite get it right.
Schumer and Cody have both since publicly shared their difficulties with creating the film Barbie and the roadblocks that came with trying to turn the doll into an "anti-Barbie".
Comedian Amy Schumer came out saying that she left the making of the original Barbie film because she had creative differences with the writers. In 2016 when Schumer left the project, she claimed that it was due to "scheduling conflicts" but this turned out to be a cover, later revealed in an interview on Watch What Happens Live.
In the interview Schumer says: “I can’t wait to see the [Margot Robbie] movie, it looks awesome" and goes on to add: "I think we said it was scheduling conflicts, that’s what we said. But yeah, it really was just creative differences. But you know, there’s a new team behind it, and it looks like it’s very feminist and cool so I will be seeing the movie.”
Cody took on the project with Sony Pictures in 2018 and told GQ in an interview that she could never get the script quite right. She said that she felt like she was incapable of turning in a Barbie draft explaining it was difficult to make Barbie into a heroine.
Cody shared: "I think I know why I s**t the bed" and goes on to say: “When I was first hired for this, I don’t think the culture had not embraced the femme or the bimbo as valid feminist archetypes yet. If you look up ‘Barbie’ on TikTok you’ll find this wonderful subculture that celebrates the feminine, but in 2014, taking this skinny blonde white doll and making her into a heroine was a tall order."
The writer said that at the time she attempted to write Schumer as an "anti-Barbie," which was a fitting for the time, but the writer found the request almost impossible to do in a way that was faithful to the doll's image.
In the interview with GQ, the writer says: “I didn’t really have the freedom then to write something that was faithful to the iconography; they wanted a girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie, and I couldn’t figure it out because that’s not what Barbie is.”
In the new script, writers Gerwig and Noah Baumbach kept the original iconography of the Barbie doll, casting the stunning Margot Robbie as Barbie but gave the script an exciting twist.
In the movie trailer, Barbie and Ken are seen living in Barbie Land, a world that seems to be perfect, but once they get to visit the real world they discover the joys and dangers of living among humans. The new movie has been met with great excitement, and will be officially making its debut in theatres July 21.
