“If you can see it, you can be it.” That’s the mentality about a lot of inclusion in filmmaking, essentially saying if you see a woman or POC in a position you want, you know it’s a reality. That’s what Greta Gerwig feels when she looks at getting a blockbuster like Barbie made.
In a recent interview with Empire, Gerwig credits the great female-directed and female-led films before her, stating that groundbreaking films like Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman helped open many doors.
“There was absolutely nothing to point to before — we weren’t able to use anything as what they call a ‘com’,” said Gerwig referring to her pitch for Barbie. “That’s how they build budgets, and they assess risk. I know we wouldn’t have been able to make this movie had Patty Jenkins not made Wonder Woman. But at the same time, we weren’t able to use Wonder Woman as an example because superheroes are their own category. You can’t use Disney Princesses because that’s its own category. This didn’t really have a thing that we could point to.”
Barbie is now heading toward the Academy Awards after becoming the highest-grossing film of 2023 with ease, having pulled in $1.44 billion worldwide, and Gerwig went on to address its own likely impact on the industry moving forward.
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“Now [Barbie] is a comp that other people can use and say, ‘Well, it works here,'” Gerwig continues. “It’s a female character, and it’s a comedy, and Noah [Baumbach] and I wrote it, lady director, all of these things — it’s big, and that worked. So hopefully, with other female characters looking forward, that helps.”
After being expelled from the utopian Barbie Land for being a less-than-perfect doll, Barbie and Ken go on a journey of self-discovery to the real world.
Directed by Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, Little Women), the Barbie movie sees Robbie and Gosling’s iconic toy couple joined by a bumper cast that includes Will Ferrell (Step Brothers), Simu Liu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), Kate McKinnon (Bombshell), America Ferrera (Superstore), Ariana Greenblatt (Love and Monsters), Emma Mackey (Sex Education), Alexandra Shipp (tick, tick… BOOM!), Issa Rae (The Lovebirds), Michael Cera (Arrested Development), Hari Nef (And Just Like That…), Kingsley Ben-Adir (One Night in Miami), Rhea Perlman (Cheers), Ncuti Gatwa (Sex Education), Emerald Fennell (The Crown), Sharon Rooney (The Electrical Life of Louis Wain), Scott Evans (Grace and Frankie), Ana Cruz Kayne (Little Women), Connor Swindells (Sex Education), Ritu Arya (The Umbrella Academy), Jamie Demetriou (Fleabag) and Helen Mirren (Shazam! Fury of the Gods).
