‘Barbie’: Read The Screenplay For Greta Gerwig’s Global Juggernaut
21.02.2024 - 20:01
/ deadline.com
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Barbie, a cultural phenomenon that became 2023’s highest-grossing film at $1.45 billion worldwide. It’s also got eight Oscar nominations, including for Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s screenplay, which AMPAS put in the Adapted category despite other bodies — including the Writers Guild — clocking it as Original.
Either way, Barbie’s a doll, and the script boasts one of the most talked-about monologues in recent memory, delivered by America Ferrara’s Gloria in the film.
The story centers on Margot Robbie’s “stereotypical” Barbie, whose every day is the best day ever, until a glitch occurs which sends her to the real world (accompanied by Ryan Gosling’s Ken). There, they discover truths they’d never imagined — some hard, some misguided and some very poignant — before heading back to Barbie Land to set things straight.
Robbie has said: “The first time I read the Barbie script, my reaction was, ‘Ah! This is so good. What a shame it will never see the light of day… Because they are never going to let us make this movie.” But Warner Bros and Mattel did let them make it.
At the Gotham Awards in November, Robbie noted: “Four years ago, I asked Greta to come and write Barbie with me.” Gerwig and Baumbach “took an object — a doll with no character or story — and cooked up the most ridiculous, outrageous, bananas script in an attempt to conjure back what they loved about the movies.”
RELATED: ‘Barbie’ Tribute At Gotham Awards: Watch Greta Gerwig & Margot Robbie’s Witty Speech
On the premiere red carpet in July, Gerwig said of Baumbach: “From the first line to the last cut, this movie is his as much as anyone’s. He is