Before Margot Robbie played Barbie in Greta Gerwig’s movie of the same name, the character almost made it to the big screen in live-action format a couple of times. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was one of the most anticipated movies of 2023, and went on to become a massive success, becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year and earning nominations for various awards. Barbie is the famous doll’s first live-action film, and it took the audience to Barbieland to meet Stereotypical Barbie (Robbie), her Barbie friends, and all the Kens, most notably Ryan Gosling’s Ken.
One day, Barbie woke up to various changes in her, including flat feet and thoughts about death, forcing her to travel into the human world (with Ken, who tagged along) to find the girl who had been playing with her. In the process, Barbie and Ken learned about gender inequality and other social issues in the human world that weren’t present (or not in the same way) in Barbieland, adding to Barbie’s existential crisis. For Gerwig’s vision of Barbie to happen, the character went through a long development process that included a couple of canceled versions.
Barbie Movie Ending Explained – What The Villain Twist & Barbie’s Decision Mean
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is a bit more layered than expected. We break down the film’s ending, including what fueled Barbie’s final decision.
Cannon Films’ 1980s Barbie Movie
A live-action Barbie film entered development in the 1980s.
Barbie has been around since 1959, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that her popularity was such that her brand started to expand into a multimedia franchise. Barbie got her first animated movie in 2001, but she could have had her first live-action adventure in the 1980s. The project was announced in 1986 (via LA Times) when Cannon Films was at its peak, and it was part of a long list of upcoming movies that included Captain America, Sinbad, and Rockula. The plot of this version of Barbie was simply described as the doll showing her owner that “all of her dreams can come true”, which is very fitting with her brand.
Cannon Films’ Barbie movie never came to be as Mattel ceased working with the studio following its live-action adaptation of Masters of the Universe in 1987. Masters of the Universe was a huge critical and commercial failure, and so a Barbie movie didn’t move forward as the risk was too high.
Sharon Stone’s 1990s Barbie Movie
Sharon Stone’s Barbie pitch wasn’t taken seriously.
Sharon Stone revealed in January 2024, in a comment on Barbie’s America Ferrara Instagram, that she came up with an idea for a live-action Barbie movie in the 1990s. Stone shared that she “was laughed out [of] the studio”, despite counting on the support of “the head of Barbie”. Stone then congratulated Ferrera and the rest of the Barbie team for their “courage and endurance”. Stone didn’t share more details about her Barbie pitch, and it’s unlikely she will, but it goes to show that it took decades for Barbie to be taken seriously outside the toy world.
Amy Schumer’s Barbie Movie
Amy Schumer playing Barbie almost came true.
A live-action Barbie movie entered development in 2009, and in 2014, Mattel teamed up with Sony Pictures to produce the project, with filming planned to begin the following year. In 2015, Diablo Cody was brought on board to rewrite the screenplay, which later went through more rewrites with a new team. In 2016, Amy Schumer was announced to be rewriting the script (with her sister Kim Caramele) and starring as Barbie, but dropped out the following year, initially citing scheduling conflicts but revealing in 2023 that it was due to creative differences with the then-producers of the film.
Anne Hathaway’s Barbie Movie
Anne Hathaway could have been the real-life Barbie.
A couple of months after Schumer’s exit, Anne Hathaway was in consideration to play Barbie, while Sony hired Olivia Milch to rewrite the script. The following year, Alethea Jones was brought on board to direct the project, but it didn’t go further than that. In 2018, the rights reverted to Mattel, and with the expiration of Sony’s option on the film and its transfer to Warner Bros., Barbie lost Hathaway, Jones, and its producers. Hathaway’s Barbie is said to have followed Schumer’s idea, in which Barbie would have been kicked out of Barbieland for not being perfect enough and would have landed in a real-world adventure.
Now with Warner Bros., the live-action Barbie movie went through a couple more changes to become the 2023 hit everyone now knows. Although Gerwig’s Barbie has a different story than what’s known about past versions, it kept the essence of Schumer’s idea in the sense of Barbie leaving Barbieland after no longer fitting those “perfect” standards, though Barbie‘s journey had a much deeper meaning and reason than not being “perfect enough”, and she wasn’t kicked out for being different, instead choosing to leave to find out what was going on with her.
