Margot Robbie hoping to recapture ‘Barbie’ magic with ‘The Sims’ movie
Having very recently turned a world-famous property known and loved the world over into a monster-sized hit movie, Margot Robbie will be hoping to do it all over again after signing on to spearhead an adaptation of The Sims as a producer.
Video game adaptations are a tricky business and an area in which the movie business has stumbled an alarming number of times over the decades, but it’s well worth remembering that many eyebrows were initially raised when it was first announced that Mattel’s iconic Barbie doll would become the subject of a major feature film.
Of course, the combination of producer/star Robbie and co-writer/director Greta Gerwig blew away any of those doubts, with the end result becoming the highest-grossing release of 2023, the top-earning Warner Bros. movie in history, and a seven-time Academy Award nominee that found itself in the running for ‘Best Picture’.
That’s not to say The Sims is being designed specifically with the same intentions, but the comparisons will inevitably invite themselves given the involvement of Robbie and her LuckyChap banner, never mind the game franchise’s status as a titan of its own industry that’s shifted almost 200 million copies worldwide since the first entry was rolled out in February 2000.
Kate Herron – best known for helming the entire first season of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Disney+ series Loki – will direct, with her other recent credits including hit Netflix comedy Sex Education and post-apocalyptic dramedy Daybreak, while she’s also on deck to oversee an episode on the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us. She’ll co-write the screenplay with Briony Redman, too, with the pair previously collaborating on the script for an upcoming instalment of Doctor Who‘s latest season.
On the surface, The Sims hardly translates to cinema given that it puts players squarely in control of an avatar that then proceeds to live out an entire life where the person in charge dictates every facet of their existence from clothes and personality to family, friends, and profession, but much the same could be said of Barbie, and everyone knows how that turned out.
There’s no real narrative to speak of that’s crying out for an adaptation, and while any semblance of plot details remain firmly under wraps for now, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that The Sims could take at least a couple of cues from Barbie by offering a self-aware skewering of the mundanity that defines many of the NPCs who dwell within.
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