Barbie 2 Gets a Promising Update from Greta Gerwig after Original's $1.4B Haul
Despite her previous claims, the Barbie director isn’t opposed to making a sequel anymore — but not everything is as obvious as it seems.
Summary:
- The original Barbie movie earned over $1.4B worldwide and won an Oscar for Best Original Song.
- Greta Gerwig recently changed her stance on making a sequel and claimed she’d like to work on Barbie 2.
- However, lead star Margot Robbie was vocal about not wanting to reprise her role: according to her, the story is completed.
The main hit of the summer 2023, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie earned over $1.4B at the worldwide box office but failed to win more than one Academy Award — unlike its iconic duo, Christopher Nolan ’s Oppenheimer, which fell just a tiny bit short of joining the $1B club but brought a whopping 7 Oscars home.
Despite the Academy Awards disappointment, Barbie is beloved by millions of people all around the world.
Fans have been asking for a Barbie 2 announcement ever since the original movie’s release, but there haven’t been any positive updates on that — until now.
Greta Gerwig Ready to Make Barbie 2
Despite the overwhelming success of the first movie led by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, director Greta Gerwig used to be pretty cool to the idea of making a sequel. Both she and her lead stars voice the opinion that Barbie was a story told in its entirety, and it didn’t require a second, third, and further installments whatsoever.
However, after the recent Oscar ceremony, Greta Gerwig seemingly changed her opinion: now, the Barbie director claims she has “no resistance” toward the sequel.
“I’m not dismissing [Barbie 2], I want to do it,” Gerwig told Deadline.
While the reasons for her sudden change of mind are unknown, the problems are obvious.
Barbie 2 Doesn’t Have a Suitable Premise
While many fans were happy to learn about Gerwig’s willingness to create a sequel, there’s a huge obstacle in the way. Greta Gerwig did a phenomenal job at directing the original Barbie, but she’s not the sole part of the mechanism that led the movie to its international success, and the other parts are admittedly not in the sequel’s favor.
Margot Robbie, the lead star of Barbie, was vocal about her lack of desire to make sequels: she claimed the story was complete and was right.
The original movie ended with Barbie fully embracing herself as a real human woman, meaning the potential sequel would have to either find a new main character or come up with a reason why Barbie’s real-world life is interesting, depriving us of Barbieland.
Either way doesn’t look too good — and returning Margot Robbie’s character to Barbieland would somewhat nullify her entire character development in the original movie. Not like Margot Robbie wants to reprise the role, anyway.
Source: Deadline