Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie is taking the world by storm. We've seen the memes, we've heard the soundtrack, and first reactions are wildly positive... but it took a while to get here.
Though the doll first debuted in 1959, it took 50 years before Mattel decided it was time to put her on the big screen. “The brand wasn’t ready for a movie,” senior VP Richard Dickson said in 2009. In the last 10 years, Dickson continued, Barbie had evolved from a toy into an intellectual property. He cited home entertainment (i.e. several successful animated movies), stage shows, and live symphonies as proof.
We have done our best to put together a timeline, starting all the way back when Mattel first agreed to license the Barbie IP for a live-action adaptation and ending with Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach's surrealist comedy spin. Sit back, relax, and learn all about the Barbie movies that didn't make it to the big screen.
2009 - 2013: Universal Studios, Laurence Mark, and a whole lot of nothing
In 2009, Universal announced that it had struck a deal with Mattel: it would take over the distribution of the successful Barbie animated films and put out the first-ever live-action movie. Producer Laurence Mark, known at the time for Jerry Maguire, I, Robot, and Julie & Julia, was tapped to produce a series of family-friendly films.
"Barbie may be the most popular girl in the world, and has always been a wonderfully aspirational figure, so we must do her proud," Mark said.
There would be little news about the film until 2011, until reports came out that Universal's Barbie movie had found its Ken. Several outlets reported that 90210 star Trevor Donovan would play Barbie's male counterpart. And then... all went quiet again. No direct statement (that we could find, anyway) was made by Universal or Mark.
2014: Universal is out, Sony is in
Finally, in 2014, an update was given – and the live-action Barbie movie was under new management. Sony Pictures Entertainment announced that they had partnered with Mattel to deliver a comedy based on the blonde icon. This time, Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, who helped create DreamWorks before moving on to head Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, would produce. Sex And The City writer/co-executive producer Jenny Bicks would pen the script.
"We've always thought that the Barbie story had great potential, but a universe of possibilities opened up when Jenny, Walter, and Laurie brought us their unexpected, clever, and truly funny concept. It captures everything that has made Barbie a classic for generation after generation while also standing on its own, establishing Barbie as a truly original screen character," Hannah Minghella, President of Production said at the time. It sounded promising, and excitement for the film was reignited. Production was said to begin at the end of the year. However... it didn't.
2015: Diablo Cody and the script that never was
In 2015, Sony hired Juno and Jennifer's Body scribe Diablo Cody to pen a second version of Bicks' script, also announcing a June 2017 release date. "Diablo's unconventionality is just what Barbie needs," Parkes said. "It signals we're going for a legitimately contemporary tone. We're bringing her on because she had great ideas, but even more importantly, she truly loves Barbie."
Later that year, however, media outlets began to report that Sony were unhappy with the script Cody turned in. They would use a multitrack strategy instead: three writers – Bert Royal, Hilary Winston, and Lindsey Beer – were hired to pen their own script in a “may the best man win” sort of way.
"I failed so hard at that project," Cody said back in 2018. "I was literally incapable of writing a Barbie script. God knows I tried." Then in 2023, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter would reflect on her failure, telling GQ, “That idea of an anti-Barbie made a lot of sense given the feminist rhetoric of 10 years ago. 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.”
Cody is perhaps best known for putting her own spin on the typical teenage girl movie, coining the phrase “hell is a teenage girl” and writing about young, imperfect women who you can’t help but root for – even if they’re (literally) eating men or slow-dancing with a married man while his wife isn’t home. At the time, however, the world may have not been ready for an imperfect Barbie (and we’ll forever mourn the loss of a Diablo Cody Barbie film).
2016: Amy Schumer takes over
At the end of 2016, Sony and Mattel announced that they had finally found their Barbie in comedian Amy Schumer. Schumer and her sister Kim Caramele would rewrite Hilary Winston’s script, and a search for a director was underway. Amy Pascal joined as producer.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Winston’s script idea told a story that “begins in a perfect land of Barbies, where one woman slowly awakens to the fact that she doesn’t fit in. She is expelled from the idealistic land and journeys to the real world, where she discovers that being unique is an asset.”
Sony reportedly sought to make an “imaginative family comedy with plenty of heart,” and would use Splash, Big, and Enchanted as inspiration. The idea of a family-friendly film penned by and starring Schumer, however, seemed a little contradictory as the actor was (and still is) known for her R-rated comedy.
But in March of 2017, Schumer would leave the project, citing scheduling conflicts.
"Sadly I’m no longer able to commit to Barbie due to scheduling conflicts," Schumer told Variety in an official statement. "The film has so much promise, and Sony and Mattel have been great partners. I’m bummed, but look forward to seeing Barbie on the big screen." At this time, a release date was set for June 29, 2018 – and the movie still didn't have a director.
"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 later admitted. Schumer had written Barbie as "an ambitious inventor" and Sony reportedly asked that the invention be a high heel made of Jell-O. "The idea that that’s just what every woman must want, right there, I should have gone, 'You’ve got the wrong gal.'"
2017 - 2018: Sony loses Anne Hathaway – and the rights to Barbie
Shortly after Schumer's departure, Sony announced that Anne Hathaway would take over the role of the beloved doll. Australian filmmaker Alethea Jones (who would go on to work on TV series Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies) was tapped to direct (after a reported nod from Hathaway), with Ocean's 8 writer Olivia Milch set to give the script another rewrite. The release date was moved to August 8, 2018.
But as soon as 2018 came around, the release date shifted again, this time to May 8, 2020. However, Sony wouldn't be around to see this come to fruition – or even make it to day one of pre-production. The studio's rights to Barbie had expired, Walter Parkes, Laurie Macdonald, and Amy Pascal were no longer involved, and the movie had been subsequently pulled from its release calendar.
Instead of reaching a deal with Sony in order to renew the rights, Mattel decided to invite Warner Bros. over to the Dreamhouse.
2019: Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig enter the chat
Not only had Mattel found a new studio, they had also found a new Barbie. Margot Robbie officially signed on to star, co-producing the film under her LuckyChap Entertainment banner.
“Barbie is one of the most iconic franchises in the world and we are excited to partner with Warner Bros. Pictures and Margot Robbie to bring her to life on the big screen,” said Ynon Kreiz, chairman and CEO of Mattel. "We look forward to building on this collaboration with Warner Bros. Pictures as we tell the stories of our beloved brands."
Robbie would later tell Vogue that she had a meeting with Kreiz in 2018, and pitched LuckyChap as the perfect production company for the job. This lead to bigger meetings with Mattel, meetings with Warner Bros., and Robbie asking Greta Gerwig if she would write and direct. Gerwig said yes, as long as she could co-write the script with her partner, Noah Baumbach. "It felt sparky to me in some way that felt kind of promising," Gerwig told Vogue. “I was the one who said, Noah and I will do this."
Gerwig is probably best known for Lady Bird and Little Women, which she both wrote and directed. She also wrote and starred in Baumbach's Frances Ha. Much like Cody, Gerwig is no stranger to 'imperfect' young women and writes them with a special kind of attention and care. There's humor, of course, but there's heartache, tears, and an overall gentle sort of beauty to her work. Of course, Barbie is quite the departure from the indie nature of her and Baumbach's films.
According to Robbie, Gerwig wrote an abstract poem as the treatment for the film, and no one at Warner Bros. or Mattel saw any pages of the script until it was done. Robbie recalled reading the script and thinking that it was genius, but that there was "no way they were going to able to make this movie."
2021 - present: Ryan Gosling, Barbenheimer, and a worldwide shortage of pink
They were, in fact, able to make the movie. In 2021, Ryan Gosling was cast as Ken in a move that both confused and delighted the internet: Isn't Ken supposed to be younger? Is Ryan Gosling still a heartthrob? But the Ken in Gerwig's Barbie world isn't some perfect, plastic hunk. In fact, his life kind of sucks.
"Ken’s got no money, he’s got no job, he’s got no car, he’s got no house. He’s going through some stuff," Gosling told Entertainment Weekly last July. Barbie is the shining star of the film, and well, he's just Ken.
Fast forward to December 2022, when the long-awaited teaser trailer for the equally long-awaited movie drops. No cancellations, no writers pulling out, no expired licenses: the live-action Barbie movie was finally real – and the internet rejoiced.
The plot doesn't stray too far from the original idea for the film, either: "After being expelled from Barbieland for being a less-than-perfect doll, Barbie sets off to the real world to find true happiness with a little help from Ken." Although, as we mentioned above, Ken's usefulness remains to be seen. There's also several Kens and several Barbies – and a three-story life-size Dreamhouse that caused a worldwide shortage of pink. For those who thought Gerwig's Barbie would be a soft, muted take on the famous doll... boy, were they wrong.
Barbie set a release date (a real one this time) for July 21, 2023. People were quick to notice that this was the same exact release date as Christopher Nolan's dark historical drama Oppenheimer – and thus, Barbenheimer was born.
Phew! We're not sure how we got from a rough outline in 2009 to photoshopped photos of Margot Robbie posing in front of a nuclear blast with Cillian Murphy – but we're glad we did.
Barbie hits theaters on July 21. For more, check out our list of all the cool Easter eggs in the Barbie trailer.
