When it was announced that Margot Robbie had signed on to produce and star in a live-action movie based on the world-famous Barbie doll, the casting seemed to be a match made in heaven. But as much as Margot’s blonde-bombshell looks and svelte figure easily lend themselves to her playing a typical “Barbie girl in a Barbie world”, the actress revealed that she wants to subvert people’s expectations of what a Barbie film would be about.
“Something like Barbie where the IP, the name itself, people immediately have an idea of, “Oh, Margot is playing Barbie, I know what that is,” but our goal is to be like, “Whatever you’re thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different – the thing you didn’t know you wanted.”
Margot Robbie is already well-known for playing a classic subversion of the kind of plastic feminity Barbie is known to represent. In the role of Harley Quinn, Robbie had a blast playing a young, skinny attractive blonde who loves makeup and glittery things. But Harley also happens to be a highly-trained psychiatrist and a full-blown sociopathic nutjob who loves violence and disdains normal society.
Clearly, Robbie has a lot of experience taking society’s views of femininity and turning them on their head in fun and entertaining ways. The actress’s production partner on the Barbie film, Josey McNamara, further elaborated on how they plan to subvert expectations with the film, starting out with getting Greta Gerwig, of Lady Bird fame, and Noam Baumbach, who penned Marriage Story, to write the script.
“And then Barbie, which is kind of our Everest. As Margot said, you think you know what that movie is with Margot as Barbie, but Greta and Noah have subverted it, and we can’t wait to get into that one.”
This is not the first time a subversive live-action Barbie movie has been announced. A few years ago Amy Schumer was in talks to appear as Barbie in a film where the toy comes out of her plastic world and into the real one and discovers she is not as perfect in real life as she had imagined. The project was shelved citing scheduling conflicts with Schumer.
That is when Robbie came in and brought the rights to the character for her production studio LuckyChap. Naturally, an iconic figure like Barbie comes with an in-built fanbase that is going to have certain expectations from her film. While Robbie and her company intend to cater to that fanbase, they also hope to create a conversation.
“Now, can we truly honor the IP and the fan base and also surprise people? Because if we can do all that and provoke a thoughtful conversation, then we’re really firing on all cylinders.”
Sounds like Barbie, the live-action movie is going to be a lot more ambitious than it might appear at first glance. Hopefully, Robbie will be able to put her mark on the character and kickstart a new female-led franchise that Hollywood has been missing since The Hunger Games. This news arrives courtesy of The Hollywood Report.