The billion-dollar idea that got Sharon Stone “laughed out the studio”
Sharon Stone was convinced she had a game-changing pitch, but studio executives weren’t wise enough to listen to her.
Her rise to prominence in the 1990s was an interesting case in which Hollywood was able to greet female celebrities with wealth and success, but not respect. Although the box office draw that Stone had was simply undeniable, she couldn’t afford the reputation of being a ‘serious’ actress, as many pundits and studio heads simply disregarded her as a beauty with no thoughts worth listening to.
Stone certainly utilised her physicality and sexuality to kickstart her career, as it was her provocative role alongside Michael Douglas in the shocking erotic thriller Basic Instinct that made her a box office star. However, Paul Verhoeven’s slick noir story was far more than just raunchiness, as it required a complex mix of satire and sincerity. Stone did make an effort to work with great directors, such as Sam Raimi and Martin Scorsese, but her fame petered out after a while.
Despite being met with both financial success and critical acclaim (including an Oscar nomination for Casino), she didn’t have the power to pitch her own projects, even if she was convinced that they would be massive hits. After the Greta Gerwig film Barbie picked up wins at the Critics’ Choice Awards, the actor revealed that she had pitched her own idea about the brand back in the ‘90s.
“I was laughed out the studio when I came [with] the Barbie idea in the ’90s [with] the support of the head of Barbie,” Stone told Variety, “How far we’ve come”.
Although she seems to have been alluding to sexism as a reason behind her pitch getting rejected, Hollywood has had a complicated history of attempting to adapt toys and games into films. Prior to the ‘90s, the only real examples were the underseen animated Transformers: The Movie and the criminally underrated Clue, which only developed a strong cult following after it underperformed in theatres.
Prior to Barbie, the track record hadn’t been any better for such cinema since the ‘90s. Battleship and Dungeons & Dragons were both massive bombs, and Paramount never seemed to be capable of making a good GI Joe film, despite several attempts. The success of the Transformers films was an outlier, as they both drew from the source material of the original cartoons and had a powerful director in Michael Bay, who held a lot of sway in the industry.
Barbie came together based on the strength of Gerwig’s track record, as she had two ‘Best Picture’-nominated hits on her résumé with Lady Bird and Little Women. Given that Margot Robbie had started developing female-lead films under her production company Lucky Chap, everything coalesced for the toy to get the big-screen treatment.
Of course, not even the most enthusiastic prognosticators would have predicted that Barbie would be one of the biggest hits in the history of Warner Bros, and a genuine award season player that created countless viral moments. Stone may have had an interesting idea in the ‘90s that may have very well been successful, given the sway she had at the time; however, the lengths needed to ensure that Robbie and Gerwig could make the ultimate Barbie movie have made the unanimous praise for the film worth it.
