Warner Bros. Discovery ran into a bit of a problem after Barbie made a billion-and-a-half dollars: Neither its star nor its director/co-writer want to make Barbie 2. The corporation still has a Mattel cinematic universe in the offing, but will that capture the magic that was one half of “Barbenheimer”? Possibly not. But despite the unwillingness of the people who made Barbie to do a sequel, Warners isn’t giving up on their dream just yet.
Per Deadline, WBD chief Pam Abdy said she’d still “love” to make Barbie 2, a movie she said “ignited audiences around the world.” Heck, they’re still “always talking” about making it. With whom, exactly? She didn’t say. Are Warners execs constantly calling up Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig (and maybe her cowriter/husband Noah Baumbach), begging them over texts to come back to the well instead of moving on to other projects?
Barbie didn’t just make the most amount of money for any movie in 2023. A movie based on a line of long-controversial dolls, which have been criticized for decades for promoting unrealistic beauty images for women, racked up a whopping eight Oscar nominations, even if none of them were for Best Director or Best Actress. Maybe that’s okay, though, because Gerwig and Robbie are still up for other trophies this Sunday.
(Via Deadline)