Diablo Cody Didn’t Have the ‘Freedom’ to Write a Great ‘Barbie’ Script: Studio Wanted a ‘Girl-Boss’ Twist
"They wanted a girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie," the Oscar winner said of the then-Sony film, "and I couldn’t figure it out because that’s not what Barbie is."
Diablo Cody is addressing her botched “Barbie” script for Sony five years after the fact.
The Oscar-winning “Juno” screenwriter was attached to pen the screenplay for a meta “Barbie” movie before exiting in 2018. Cody was enlisted to re-write former “Sex and the City” writer Jenny Bicks’ 2014 Sony script. Amy Schumer was initially cast in the lead role prior to also parting ways with the project. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach took over the film in 2019 after it moved to Warner Bros.
Cody infamously never turned in a script due to creative differences with the studio, as the “Jennifer’s Body” scribe told GQ.
“I think I know why I shit the bed: When I was first hired for this, I don’t think the culture had not embraced the femme or the bimbo as valid feminist archetypes yet,” Cody said. “If you look up ‘Barbie’ on TikTok you’ll find this wonderful subculture that celebrates the feminine, but in 2014, taking this skinny blonde white doll and making her into a heroine was a tall order.”
She added, “There was a lot of pressure to not write the dramatic equivalent of ‘math is hard.'”
Cody noted that casting Schumer as Barbie was in line with the themes of the decade, but the storytelling arc was not what she had envisioned for the live-action adaptation.
“That idea of an anti-Barbie made a lot of sense given the feminist rhetoric of 10 years ago,” Cody said. “I didn’t really have the freedom then to write something that was faithful to the iconography; they wanted a girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie, and I couldn’t figure it out because that’s not what Barbie is.”
Schumer left in 2017, with future Oscar winner Anne Hathaway in talks for the role. Cody left in 2018 after additional studio pressure.
“I heard endless references to ‘The Lego Movie’ in development, and it created a problem for me because they had done it so well,” Cody said. “Any time I came up with something meta, it was too much like what they had done. It was a roadblock for me, but now enough time has passed that they can just cast [‘The Lego Movie’ actor] Will Ferrell as the antagonist in a real-life ‘Barbie’ movie and nobody cares.”
Cody summed up, “I have made several swings at IP with ‘Barbie’ and ‘Powerpuff Girls,’ and I take full responsibility for the failures of those attempts, because I do have a specific voice and POV and I haven’t figured out how to modulate it. Ultimately, you’re selling toys. I mean, nobody really wants to delve deeper into the lore and mythos of Hungry Hungry Hippos. That’s not really an artistic exercise.”
However, Cody is excited for Gerwig’s “Barbie,” which she called “my ‘Joker'” in terms of anticipation.
Former “Barbie” actress Schumer similarly praised Gerwig’s upcoming film, which stars Margot Robbie who also produces.
“I can’t wait to see the movie, it looks awesome,” Schumer said on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” adding, “There’s a new team behind it, and it looks like it’s very feminist and cool so I will be seeing the movie.”
Schumer added of her own shelved “Barbie” project, “I think we said it was scheduling conflicts, that’s what we said. But yeah, it really was just creative differences. They definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it, the only way I was interested in doing it.”
For all the details on the history of the “Barbie” movie, click here.