After just one week in theaters, Barbie has already passed the $500 million mark worldwide. This type of box office success inevitably leads to sequels, but director Greta Gerwig hasn't given another movie much thought.
"At this moment, it’s all I’ve got," the filmmaker tells Variety (via Toonado.com). "I feel like that at the end of every movie, like I’ll never have another idea and everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I did. I wouldn’t want to squash anybody else’s dream but for me, at this moment, I’m at totally zero."
Gerwig may not have much interest in developing a Barbie sequel, but Mattel and Warner Bros. most certainly do.
“Barbie, as a brand, has many different iterations. The product lines of Barbie is a very broad brand. In addition to the main Barbie figure, she has family, she has a lot of elements around in her universe,” Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz tells Variety. “It’s a very rich universe… It’s a very broad and very elastic brand, in terms of opportunities.”
Kreiz continues, “At the outset, we’re not saying, ‘Okay, let’s think already about movie two and three.’ Let’s get the first one right and make that a success. And if you do that, opportunities open up very quickly, once you establish the first movie as a successful representation of a franchise on the big screen.”
While it's obviously still early days, it would almost be unheard of for a movie to gross half a billion dollars in its first week in theaters and not jump right to the top of a studio's must-sequelize list. At any rate, it sounds like the execs are planning to move forward with more Barbie movies whether Gerwig is on board or not.
Mattel is also developing multiple other projects with several other studios, including Polly Pocket, Barney, Hot Wheels, Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots, and even a Magic 8-Ball movie.
From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig (Little Women, Lady Bird) comes Barbie, which also stars America Ferrera (End of Watch, the How to Train Your Dragon films), Kate McKinnon (Bombshell, Yesterday), Issa Rae (The Photograph, Insecure), Rhea Perlman (I’ll See You in My Dreams, Matilda), and Will Ferrell (the Anchorman films, Talladega Nights), and more.
Gerwig directs from a screenplay she penned alongside Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story, The Squid and the Whale), based on the iconic fashion dolls by Mattel.
The film’s producers are Oscar nominee David Heyman (Marriage Story, Gravity), Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner, with Gerwig, Baumbach, Ynon Kreiz, Richard Dickson, Michael Sharp, Josey McNamara, Courtenay Valenti, Toby Emmerich and Cate Adams serving as executive producers.