BARBIE Screenwriters Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach Tease the Potential of a KEN Spinoff Movie

Now that we’re halfway through December, I think we can safely say that Barbie it was the film of the year. The film hit the proverbial out of the park with a box office gross of $1.4 billion that blew everyone away. The film followed the classic doll, played by Margot Robbie, who suddenly had to deal with feelings of existential dread, bringing her into the real world where she could understand what it meant to be a woman. It was a beautiful story that spoke to so many people, which obviously means the studio wanted to know if they could make a sequel.

Robbie has previously spoken about this possibility, not ruling it out, but clarifying that a sequel was never considered while making the film, which largely told a complete story. Although no one had really questioned whether that meant a Ken movie was out of the question.

The director of the film, Greta Gerwigand his writing partner, Noah Baumbach, co-writer of the script, recently sat down with 60 Minutes at CBS, and they tackled just that. First, Baumbach was asked what he thought of the Barbie movie idea when Gerwig first asked him about it. He explained:

“I couldn’t even imagine it. And Greta wrote these pages… and I thought, ‘I can write this movie about Barbie. I totally understand what it’s about.'”

Gerwig explained that the film begins “very mechanically… like clockwork” with Barbie and her friends enjoying a perfect day in Barbie Land. And then suddenly there’s an existential crisis: Barbie asks, “Do you guys ever think about dying?”

That moment in the film is the end result of a writing process that began with Gerwig writing some early pages of the script and showing them to Baumbach. In those first pages, Barbie meets an old lady in her backyard and is confronted with the idea of ​​her own mortality. Gerwig explained:

“Noah immediately understood what I was doing and said, ‘You know, this is exciting and there’s a movie here.’”

The writing duo also revealed how their writing process influences their approach to directing. Both Gerwig and Baumbach said they prefer to stick exactly to what’s written in the script, with no substitutions on set when the film is shot.

Gerwig said it in the movies Lady Bird AND Little Women, everything was written down, down to every “you know” and “um.” She says this level of detail is important for maintaining the rhythm of a conversation written and read aloud hundreds of times before the first frame is shot.

“Once we have something that’s more like a script, we start reading it out loud. We’ve checked the language ourselves, so we can hear if there’s a repeating line or a rhythm that’s off.” .”

Baumbach and Gerwig said this while writing the Barbie script, they always have Ryan Gosling in mind to play Ken, even writing his full name next to Ken’s lines in the first draft. While writing for the role of Ken, Baumbach and Gerwig had a number of ideas that they couldn’t fit into the final draft. In an earlier version of the script, they further explored the “Ken effect” in the real world and wrote a scene for the film in which Ryan Gosling plays himself.

“We had too much material for Ken. We wrote and wrote and wrote,” Gerwig explained. Baumbach interrupted and told Gerwig not to “give it away.” When asked by the CBS correspondent: “Will there ever be a Ken movie?” Gerwig laughed and said he couldn’t comment on that, but he didn’t rule it out entirely. “I mean, the truth is, you know… I guess we’ll see,” he said with a smile.

Just like inside Barbie, I don’t think anyone was actually thinking about Ken! But his character still has a lot that he could work on. If they end up making that movie, I will absolutely be there for it.