Credit: Netflix

Noah Baumbach initially thought ‘Barbie’ movie “was a terrible idea”

Mon 30 October 2023 15:41, UK

Barbie co-writer Noah Baumbach has revealed he initially thought the movie “was a terrible idea” until Greta Gerwig convinced him otherwise.

As the WGA Strike was underway when Barbie hit cinemas this summer, Baumbach didn’t promote the film upon release. However, now the strike has ended, the writer is free to speak about the movie and why he his first feelings towards the project were wrong.

Speaking at a screening of Barbie at WGA’s West headquarters on October 27th, Baumbach told Judd Apatow: “The reason you make anything is because you’re saying to this imaginary audience, ‘Maybe you feel this way too?’ So, when the whole world seems to feel that way, then that’s very gratifying and very moving. Because sometimes people are like, ‘No we don’t recognise that feeling.’”

However, Baumbach didn’t always envision Barbie to be a monumental success, recalling: “I thought it was a terrible idea and Greta signed me up for it.”

Elaborating on the reasons why he thought Barbie would be “terrible”, Baumbach added: “I was just like, ‘I don’t see how this is going to be good at all’. I kind of blocked it for a while and every time she’d bring it up, I’d be like, ‘You’ve gotta get us out of this.’ And then the pandemic happened…”

He added: “It was Barbie waking up in her Dreamhouse and coming out to her backyard and meeting somebody who was sick and dying. I read these pages and I thought, ‘I understand now what this is.’ … The movie is about embracing your mortality and about the mess of it all, so it was exciting.”

In a four-and-a-half star review, Far Out said of Barbie: “This is certainly not merely a film to watch only once, to laugh and sing along to, and be done with. In fact, Barbie may just accomplish the greatest of all art’s tasks, and incite change. Don’t be fooled by her hype or her history; Barbie is an essential piece of cinema for the modern age.”

Watch the trailer below.