How do you follow-up the biggest movie of your career? If you’re Margot Robbie, we’re beginning to find out.
It was a mere 14 months ago that Barbie depleted the world’s supply of pink on its way to becoming the 15th highest-grossing film of all-time, with a $1.4 billion total at the box office. Since then, the film’s star, producer, and greatest champion has gone off the radar — partially because she and husband / LuckyChap Entertainment producing partner Tom Ackerley are expecting their first child (congrats!), but it’s also a calculated move on Robbie’s part.
After months of promotion of Barbie, including recreating the doll’s most iconic outfits during the press tour, Robbie was asked by Deadline about whether she planned on taking a break from the spotlight. “[I] think everyone’s probably sick of the sight of me for now,” she answered. “I should probably disappear from screens for a while. Honestly, if I did another movie too soon, people would say, ‘Her again? We just did a whole summer with her. We’re over it.’ I don’t know what I’ll do next, but I hope it’s a little while away.”
Well, it’s been a little while, and Robbie has been busy planning what’s next.
First up, she has A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, the new project from Columbus and After Yang director Kogonada. The film is described as “an original tale of two strangers and the extraordinary emotional journey that connects them,” with the strangers being played by Robbie and Colin Farrell (the impressive cast also includes Lily Rabe, Jodie Turner-Smith, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Hamish Linklater, and Billy Magnussen). Not much else is known about the “female-focused” A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, other than Robbie has a new look and it comes out on May 9, 2025, Mother’s Day weekend.
Robbie will go on a different kind of journey in Wuthering Heights. She was cast as Catherine Earnshaw to Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff (not the cat) in the adaptation of the classic Emily Brontë novel from writer and director Emerald Fennell in her follow-up to Saltburn. And just like with Saltburn and Fennell’s Oscar-winning directorial debut, Promising Young Woman, Robbie is producing the film through her production company, LuckyChap Entertainment.
That’s where much of Robbie’s attention is these days. To return to the Deadline interview from above, she called producing a “24/7” job, in which “we don’t get a break.” Outside of Wuthering Heights and the recently released My Old Ass, LuckyChap is behind a number of upcoming titles, including the following:
– Avengelyne, based on the character from Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld
– Olivia Wilde’s Christmas comedy Naughty
– Sirens, a dark comedy limited series picked up by Netflix from Maid creator Molly Smith Metzler that’s about “women, power and class”
– A Tank Girl reboot
– An adaptation of the acclaimed novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, possibly directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
– Movies based on video game The Sims and board game Monopoly (hey, it worked for Barbie)
Not all of LuckyChap’s previously announced films will see the light of the day (I’m rooting for you, Big Thunder Mountain!), and that’s probably keeping the founders up at night. But Robbie is up for the challenge, especially if it means more opportunities for female filmmakers, writers, and producers. “We set out to break barriers with and for female talent, and if it isn’t a project that could potentially do that, then it’s not a project for us,” she said earlier this year.
Robbie doesn’t control the railways or the flow of commerce, but she does have a large influence on Hollywood, and she’s using the massive blank check that Barbie provided her to make the movies she wants to see. Her job isn’t beach. It’s actor, producer, mogul.