“It’s like you’re playing with dolls when you’re writing something, and in this case, of course, there was this extra layer in that they were dolls,” Baumbach says. Part of it had to do with the fact that their characters were dolls. “There really was this kind of open, free road that we could keep building,” Baumbach says. The project seemed “wide open,” Gerwig tells me. When I ask Gerwig and Baumbach to describe their Barbie writing process, the words “open” and “free” get used a lot. saw any pages of the script until it was finished. And when I say ‘abstract,’ I mean it was super abstract.” (Gerwig declines to read me the poem but offers that it “shares some similarities with the Apostles’ Creed.”) No one at LuckyChap, Mattel, or Warner Bros. Gerwig and Baumbach did share a treatment, Robbie adds: “Greta wrote an abstract poem about Barbie. and Mattel, being like: What’s their plan? What are they going to do? What’s it gonna be about? What’s she going to say? They have a bazillion questions.” In the end Luck圜hap found a way to structure a deal so that Gerwig and Baumbach would be left alone to write what they wanted, “which was really fucking hard to do.” “At the same time,” Robbie says, “we’ve got two very nervous ginormous companies, Warner Bros.

Luck圜hap wanted Gerwig and Baumbach to have full creative freedom. “I was the one who said, Noah and I will do this.” (Baumbach: “She broke the news to me after we were already doing it.”) “It felt sparky to me in some way that felt kind of promising,” Gerwig tells me later.

People were like, You’re going to do what?” But Gerwig said yes, on the condition that she could write the script with her partner, Noah Baumbach.

“At the time this was such a terrifying thing to take on. “I was very scared it was going to be a no,” Robbie says. Eventually Robbie started talking to Greta Gerwig about writing and directing. There were bigger meetings with Mattel, and then meetings with Warner Bros., where Luck圜hap had a first-look deal at the time. We need to find a way to acknowledge that.” And in fact, aren’t just indifferent to Barbie. “But we have to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who aren’t fans of Barbie. “We of course would want to honor the 60-year legacy that this brand has,” Robbie says.

Luck圜hap didn’t have a specific concept in mind, but they did know this much.

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