When Israeli Ynon Kreiz became Mattel’s fourth chief executive in 2018, he knew that if he wanted to stay in the job, he had to find a way to revitalize the powerful toy company. The experience at Fox Kids Europe and the content creation company Endemol, among others, helped him to understand that the key to achieving this depended on the world of entertainment. Determined to do something similar to what Marvel had achieved years before, shortly after taking office he invited several Hollywood stars to the elegant Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills to launch the project. One was Margot Robbie, whom Kreiz and Robbie Brenner, the Dallas Buyers Club producer who now chairs Mattel Films, had identified as the ideal candidate to play Barbie in a movie about the iconic doll with flesh-and-blood actors.
Despite the fact that she did not have Barbies in her childhood and only played with a cousin’s, the Australian saw in the invitation a great opportunity for her production company, LuckyChap Entertainment, whose first project, I, Tonya, had received three Oscar nominations. Robbie got what he wanted, but he knew it wouldn’t be an easy task. Projects before Kreiz’s arrival had gone as far as offering the role to Amy Schumer and Anne Hathaway, or hiring Patty Jenkins as director, but they had not come to fruition because the company was reluctant to limit Barbie’s image to a single face (there are currently 175 different models). This time, however, the goal was different. Mattel was not interested in selling more dolls, but in creating a film and television universe based on the brand.
Today it can be said that Robbie could not have been more successful, because everyone is talking about Barbenheimer, the phenomenon that has generated the arrival of Barbie on the screens of the whole world on the same weekend as Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan. In fact, it was she who summoned Greta Gerwig to continue her career as a director after Lady Bird and Donets, and gave her complete freedom to write a revolutionary script with husband, the multi-award winning Noah Baumbach, without demanding that she be the star of the film. As he explained in an interview with the New York Times, when the peculiar duo of screenwriters came to him as soon as the pandemic was over, Robbie thought that the proposal was too daring, but, nevertheless, he decided to bet on it: “I knew that the executives of Mattel and Warner Brothers had to read the script on a Friday, after having drunk a couple of glasses of their favorite cocktail. I thought they would say no, but that, if they were a little cheerful, they would be more open and realize that the film could be a lot of fun.” Amazingly, they said yes, and despite having to negotiate some details, Robbie was able to give Gerwig complete freedom in a blockbuster that cost almost €130 million. Warner added another 88 million in marketing.
Margot, who with her company premiered the telefilm The Boston Strangler with Keira Knightley this year, has three finished films and 29 more in development, was also the one who convinced Ryan Gosling to play Ken, a role many consider to be one of the best he has played throughout his career. Robbie sent him the script with a set of dolls, which the two daughters he has with Eva Mendes, Esmeralda Amada and Amada Lee, aged eight and seven, quickly adopted. When Ryan saw Ken end up in the pothole mud next to a squeezed lemon, he felt identified with the character. When he lives in Barbieland with Barbie, a world where women have achieved all the ideals of the feminist struggle, he is simply someone the pretty blonde has to dance with, and he discovers his potential when, uninvited by her, he decides to accompany her on her foray into the real world.
Margot also promised him that if he agreed to participate she would give him a gift every day of filming, which he fulfilled to the letter during the five months they were in front of the cameras: “I thought I couldn’t keep the promise. Every day I received a gift wrapped in pink paper, from Barbie for Ken. I told her that she didn’t need to continue doing it, that I was sure she had other occupations, such as starring in a movie, producing it, or running a company,” Reynolds explained to the New York Times in the same interview. Robbie replied: “When I commit to a joke, I keep it.”
