Diablo Cody scored one of the biggest cinematic wins of the mid-aughts when 2007’s Juno, the dramedy she wrote about a sarcastic pregnant teenager, skyrocketed out of indie obscurity and earned her an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Years later, her reputation as a witty and winsome feminist scribe secured, Cody was tapped to contribute to the script for a Sony Barbie movie that never made it to theaters. Now, with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie being one of the most anticipated films of 2023, Cody has shed more light on the aborted Sony project, revealing to GQ why she could never make it work.
Cody, who previously told Screen Crush that she so thoroughly failed to build a Barbie movie narrative that she never even submitted a draft, told GQ that the runaway success of 2014’s The Lego Movie made it hard for her to write Barbie meta-commentary because toy satire had already been done so successfully.
“I have made several swings at [intellectual property] with Barbie and Powerpuff Girls, and I take full responsibility for the failures of those attempts, because I do have a specific voice and POV and I haven’t figured out how to modulate it,” the writer/director continued, referencing the canned Powerpuff Girls live-action series at The CW.
ADVERTISEMENT
Cody had attempted to craft an “anti-Barbie movie” starring sharp-edged comedian Amy Schumer, whose material leans heavily on self-deprecation and sex jokes, and that concept “made a lot of sense given the feminist rhetoric of 10 years ago,” Cody told GQ.
But that spin on the iconic doll proved impossible for Cody to execute: “I didn’t really have the freedom then to write something that was faithful to the iconography; they wanted a girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie, and I couldn’t figure it out because that’s not what Barbie is.”
“I think I know why I shit the bed,” she added. “When I was first hired for this, I don’t think the culture had embraced the femme or the bimbo as valid feminist archetypes yet. If you look up ‘Barbie’ on TikTok you’ll find this wonderful subculture that celebrates the feminine, but in 2014, taking this skinny blonde white doll and making her into a heroine was a tall order.”
Schumer’s own attempt to write a Barbie script was, she told The Hollywood Reporter last year, not compatible with Sony’s vision for the character. The comedian’s version cast Barbie as an inventor, and the studio wanted Barbie’s invention to be a high heel made out of Jell-O, she said.
Gerwig’s Barbie, meanwhile, seems to skewer its heroine while also sending her a love letter; one of its taglines is, “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you.” The film, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, hasn’t even been released yet, but paparazzi photos from the set were enough to spark a hot pink, summer-long Barbiecore fashion trend in 2022.
Clearly, the culture is now ready to welcome Barbie World with arms wide open.
Cody told GQ she’s looking forward to seeing Gerwig’s Barbie, but is skeptical of the pressures auteurs face to adapt intellectual property rather than produce original material. Mattel, Barbie’s parent company, already has 45 more toy IP-based films in development, The New Yorker reported last week.
“Ultimately, you’re selling toys,” she told GQ. “I mean, nobody really wants to delve deeper into the lore and mythos of Hungry Hungry Hippos. That’s not really an artistic exercise. ... I understand why those artists have moved into that lane. I get it. The most successful movie that I’ve ever written was Juno, and that wouldn’t get a theatrical release today.”
