Hello and welcome to development purgatory.
This is the podcast all about the movies that were never made, the scripts that were
never written, and the ideas that never even made it to the page.
I'm Barbie!
I'm just Ken.
[Music]
Well, with the shirt, I feel like Allen.
Why do you feel like Allen though?
It's a pink.
I think the way it fits.
It's fair.
We'll shrink it.
All right.
Well, Ken or Ellen or however you feel today, I think we need to travel back.
Back.
To 1986.
Oh.
And the con film festival, when the Canon group made a little announcement.
About the first live action Barbie film.
Ooh, yes.
Although some historical reports conflict and say that it never actually fully got announced
that it was rather buzzed about in the trades.
Instead, I prefer to live in a world where Barbie gets a full announcement.
Do you remember said live action Barbie from the 80s?
Hmm.
I can't say I do.
No, that's right because we're 37 years ahead of our time.
No Barbie.
For 37 years.
Speaking of the Canon group.
They were, uh, booming out the beam movies for quite some time.
And in the 80s, they made a distribution deal with Warner Brothers.
And at the height of the Canon group, they made 43 films in one year.
Roger Ebert actually would say that no other production organization in the world today,
certainly not any of the seven majors had taken more chances with serious marginal films
than Canon.
So why not gamble on a blonde who was having a hell of a year?
Because in 1986, she was in Andy Warhol's The Portrait of Billy Boy, or had an animated show
of Barbie in The Rockers.
The Canon announcement came with a live action Barbie that would show her owner that all
her dreams can come true, a plot line to remember.
Or at least like Greta Gerwig in Hans one day.
I mean, with Canon, it was like, how can we make a poster to make people see the movie?
Oh, yeah.
So that was Canon in 1986.
Yeah.
Canon in 1987, a very different story.
Because they made this big announcement.
They seemed to really like to do that with their films from what I've seen.
They were releasing a movie called that they had deemed the Star Wars of the 80s.
I mean, the Star Wars of the 80s was Star Wars, but this is what they called it was the Star
Wars of the 80s.
Do you have any guesses as to what film this actually was?
Was it Life Force?
No, that was 85.
Wow.
It was still the 80s.
Right.
And it took place in the 80s.
It took place in the 80s.
She was probably in her 20s.
That's hope.
But this was her like the start of her career.
This was her leprechaun era.
Probably.
This is the closest leprechaun she has with he-man.
Well, that movie came out.
Do you know how it was received?
Poorly.
Yeah.
It was touted as a colossal floor.
Yeah.
That's also most canon films.
Because the idea of canon films is like make the spectacles for the trailer.
And that's about it.
Not really much substance for the movie.
I've actually never seen the...
I've actually never seen the Courtney Cox's Masters of the Universe.
I just watched the trailer and was like, "Ah!
There's Monica!"
I kind of want to watch it now based on the trailer.
But I'm not gonna.
Yeah.
So it was a colossal floor and a massive financial flop for the canon group, which was still recovering
from the 1985 flop, Life Force.
Do you know how they pitched Life Force?
I mean, it was an alien invasion.
Oh no, no, no.
It was claimed to be the cinematic sci-fi event of the 80s.
Oh.
And for those of you at home that don't know what Life Force is.
Life Force was based on a 1976 novel, The Space Vampires.
Loosely.
It was about three humanoids that were in like this state of suspended animation, and they were brought to Earth after being discovered in the part of an alien spaceship or whatever.
This is my favorite part of a European space shuttle called The Churchill.
I love it.
The aliens come to Earth and drain the Life Force out of people.
Yep.
Space vampires.
By seducing them.
By simply being naked.
Just trying to make this the...
The G-Synopses, but no.
Oh no, all of our episodes have the explicit E.
They do.
Attached to it.
That's your fault.
'Cause someone won't stop swearing.
That's my fault.
Yeah.
The final financial nail in the Canon Group's coffin was...
Do you know which one?
Oh.
Was it Supergirl?
No.
Don't blame Supergirl.
You're close, though.
Supergirl is like one of the later ones.
It was like Superman and Supergirl.
They both took on.
And those were like a financial burden for them.
I know that they were trying to do a Spider-Man movie as well.
And that was another like financial failure.
The budget was just too big for like the model that they were going for,
which we see today with like Blumhouse where it's like
Make cheap big returns.
I don't know what exactly the nail in the coffin was, but I knew it was around that time.
You're incredibly close.
It is Superman IV.
The Quest for Peace.
Oh!
Okay.
I didn't realize that was the nail in the coffin.
I thought they...
Do they do Supergirl first?
And then Superman?
They had to have, because from all of the research that I found,
the three like biggest financial flops they had were Masters,
Life Force and Superman IV.
And those are in a span from 1985 to 1987.
And that's when they made the deal with Warner Brothers to like take over and be like,
well, if you're not going to do a Superman movies, we'll do one.
And be like, well, how bad could it be?
It bad.
You're real bad.
They just had this crazy couple of years where in 1986,
they're turning out films like Crazy and at this point,
they really only have Life Force flopping, which it's like, alright,
when you have 43 movies on your slate and one is this...
I'm sure there were others, but one is this massive financial flop.
No biggie.
But then when Masters financially flops and Space Vampires,
which is what I'm going to call it forever and always, financially flops,
what a quick 180, the company took.
The Canon Group would go on to face bankruptcy.
Part of their assets would go to Warner Brothers.
And the group was eventually taken over by path communications,
which was controlled by an Italian.
I always want to say, Financier.
Financier?
Yes.
Giancarlo Paretti.
Over time, multiple murders would happen.
But the Canon Group would...
Wait, multiple mergers?
Yeah.
He said mergers.
Merger.
I mean, there might have been some mergers.
But multiple mergers would happen.
And the Canon Group would never be the same.
Because of this, Bobby never happened.
Yeah.
Spider-Man kind of took a similar journey as well.
Spider-Man was obtained by Canon, or at least the executive over at Canon.
Because like, he hung on to it even after the company disbanded.
The idea was that Spider-Man was going to be made by Canon films
and because of the like, sudden bankruptcy
and suddenly, like, the company was over, they just wasn't able to make it.
Yeah.
And then, like, the film was a little bit of an Icarus issue where they flew real close to the sun and flopped hard.
Yeah.
So now we're going to leave the 80s and cut to the 1990s.
Okay.
In the 1990s, Sharon Stone, super hot stuff.
She's got basic instinct in 1992.
Casino, the quick and the dead.
And then, the first thing I wanted to say about the film was that the film was made by the
film.
And then, the film was made by the film.
And then, when the secret service step out, you're actually like, oh, she a toy.
The important thing that I want to start clocking as we're going through these decades is like, listen to the plotlines of all of these Barbies.
And then, when the secret service step out, you're actually like, oh, she a toy.
I own this. I think all of us owned this. Yes. I remember that movie. That was a big deal.
Was this the start of the wave of like a shit ton of Barbie CGI movies?
Barbie would go on to star in many CG adventures like Barbie, Fairytopia, Barbie, Fairytopia, Marmedia.
In 2016, we'd get Barbie, Spy Squad, or Barbie, Dolphin Magic. In 2017, we got Barbie, video game hero.
In 2021, we get Barbie, Big City, Big Dreams. And the most recent Barbie, being Barbie and Teresa, recipe for friendship.
I do not watch this video, but I remember when the Barbie movie came out, I was seeing a bunch of videos for like Barbie reviews.
And there was one thumbnail of a guy who just looked absolutely miserable.
And like he did this to himself, but it was like the title of it was, I reviewed every straight to video Barbie movie that ever came out.
At the time of this recording, there are 44 CG animated Barbie films.
And on September 8th of 2026, Mattel is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Barbie in the Nutcracker,
with an all new 45 minute animated special on Netflix.
Oh, that's neat.
But we're doing Barbie in the Nutcracker. That's the big celebration as she just gets her original story.
Uh-huh. One more time.
Of the Nutcracker, the... not original story.
[laughs]
Thus concluding our brief segue into the Barbie CG animation world.
And you can travel to the real world too with these advertisements.
[applause]
Welcome back to Barbie Land, a vibrant, matriarchal pink utopia run by diverse Barbies.
Hi, Barbie.
Oh, no. Wait, we're only nearly at the end of the odds with 2009.
Hi, Barbie.
Yeah, we're not there yet.
When Barbie is turning 50, she look good for 50.
Real good.
[laughs]
Variety released an article stating, "Metella setting up more play dates for its toy properties.
Universal Pictures has added Barbie to its star staple, while he, man, and the Masters of the Universe
has found a new home at Sony."
Yeah. The newest Masters.
Was that Sony? Who made it?
It was Amazon.
[laughs]
It was so close.
There's a through line that I did not realize when I chose to do the history of all the Barbie movies that didn't get made
and how closely tethered it is to Masters of the Universe.
Uh-huh. Interesting.
I mean, they're toy movies, right?
But it does sort of seem that, like, if we are in the early odds, Barbie still...
Girl toys. He, man, is still boy toys.
So I get the...
Let's tether them together as a package.
And that way we've got all our bases covered.
Yeah.
So in 2009, Lawrence Mark, who worked on Jerry McGuire and Julien Julio, was set to produce.
He stated, "There's no shortage of plot possibilities since Barbie has held more than 120 jobs over the years."
At the time of the announcement, Mattel's senior VP, Richard Dixon, was asked why a movie hadn't been made before.
And his response?
The brand wasn't ready for a movie.
In the last 10 years, Barbie has evolved from a toy into an intellectual property.
Barbie has a proven track record in home entertainment.
There's been live stage shows, live symphonies, and other non-traditional forms of entertainment.
There's a flagship store in Shanghai.
So...
The brand wasn't ready for a movie.
Okay. So wait, did he say that they're doing all this stuff, but not ready for a movie?
Okay.
So you just...
Good old Richard Dixon.
But I had to...
Just wanting to get bullied.
Yeah, his parents were very nice.
So...
How someone didn't write that into the Barbie movie all that?
He just proved himself wrong.
Be like, "It's not ready for a movie.
It's not ready for a movie.
This isn't like, oh, look at this brand new IP thought we just had.
This brand has been around quite a while.
The irony to me really continues when we talk about Pixar.
So Pixar originally wanted Barbie to play Woody's love interest in Toy Story, which was 1995.
Yep, Mattel didn't allow it.
No.
They didn't allow any other choice to be in there.
Given this is a new technology, I don't know, a movie made from a computer.
That's impossible.
There's no way this is going to be any good.
So they were just like, you know what?
We're not going to deal with this for right now.
And then after the success, they're like, oh, we really should put Barbie in there.
And that's why we have Barbie and the rest of the Toy Story movies.
Well, if we jump to Toy Story 2, which is 1999, is when we get to where guide Barbie.
Yes.
So Mattel is like, oh, hey, here you can let her out for a spin for a little bit and let's see how this does.
And she did really well.
She did.
And she made it in the bloopers where she was like, I face hurts from so much smiling.
But think about it this way, where that's 1999.
She gets her own story, CG animated in 2001.
So Mattel's like, no, no, no, no, no, Barbie, no, Barbie, no, Barbie.
Oh, let's let this other person borrow her and see how it does.
Oh, this pile of money has changed my mind.
Then you cut to 2010 when we have Toy Story 3.
At this point, she's got nine years of her own stories.
She's off due in Dolphin Magic and Rapunzel's Castle and whatever.
I mean, given that Barbie has over what 200 different jobs, you're just like, we can put her in anything.
Right.
So then you cut to Toy Story 3 in 2010 and she's a pretty big part of that movie.
Yeah.
You know, who she's voiced by?
Oh, actually, I don't.
I definitely should.
She's voiced by Jody Benson in the Toy Story 1 specifically.
You know who Jody Benson is?
What was my favorite Disney movie growing up?
It was The Little Mermaid.
She was Ariel.
It was Ariel.
Huh?
My voice?
But without my voice?
How can I...
You'll have your looks?
To our right is the Hot Wheels aisle to go up in 1967.
The original series had 16 cars including the Corvette.
Thank you, pardon, man, but where's the house office?
Please hold all questions until the end of the tour.
Thank you!
I can see that now.
Right?
Yeah, I'm here.
Also, Barbie as a toy, they worked with different companies in IPs to make branded Barbies as well.
Was there a Disney Princess line?
There was.
I stayed away from the history of Barbie and the Ruth Handler of it all because that's the movie we did get.
Because I know there were definitely toys and action figures of the...
There was a Hillary Duck Barbie in 2006.
Excuse me, Lizzie McGuire?
Yeah.
They definitely started branding with other people.
Okay.
I couldn't remember if they were actually like, Mattel, Barbie, branded Disney dolls or if it was just Disney making their own dolls with like another company like what?
Star Wars and Canter or something like that.
It seems like the first Disney themed Barbie doll was produced by Mattel in 1996 with Walt Disney's Cinderella Holiday Princess Barbie.
What a mouthful.
You could cross her over with the toys, but her own moving picture?
No, no.
One of the reasons that they also stated was that they wanted Barbie to remain a blank slate so children could make her their own, which is ironic when they're like, but Jasmine Barbie.
I had two Jasmine Barbies growing up.
My mom wanted me to return one of them because why would I need two of the same Barbie?
And two is one good sturdy.
No, I liked having two Jasmine's.
We see Barbie in 2010 as part of Toy Story 3 and unfortunately she's gonna go back into the box for another five years.
April 23rd, 2014.
The rights had now moved to Sony's desk.
The same studio that was still working on a Master's movie.
Jenny Bix, who was the writer and EP of Sex in the City and the Big C as well as the writer of The Greatest Showman, was set to pen the script.
Hale does an unexpected clever and truly funny concept.
It captures everything that is made Barbie a classic for generation after generation while also standing on its own establishing Barbie as a truly original character.
It was supposed to start shooting at the end of the year.
But in early 2015, it is announced that Diablo Cody would be taking over the script duties.
So there were like two scripts for Barbie that were like pretty famously unmade and I know Diablo Cody was one of them.
At this point in time Diablo Cody is a pretty big name at in 2014.
She's done Juno in Jennifer's body and United States of Tara which I will tell everyone about because it's brilliant.
It's pretty great.
She has a very distinct voice that I love but I also know that you love what's your favorite Diablo Cody movie?
Doesn't have to be pre-2014.
I would go with Jennifer's body.
Oh wow! We've started this season writing notes about letting each other talk about things or get excited about things.
And I wrote let Dan talk about Lisa Frankenstein.
Oh, that's right. Lisa Frankenstein is, "Oh, I forgot that that was Diablo Cody. Lisa Frankenstein is great as well."
I saw them with twice in theaters.
Written by Diablo Cody directed by Zelda Williams.
Lisa Frankenstein is fantastic movie coming of age figuring out who you are. Grizzly murders.
So Diablo Cody, I was like, "Ah, Diablo Cody Barbie, I want to read that script."
So you were talking about how there were two very famous unmade Barbie scripts which is fun for me because I am doomed to never actually get a project that has a script behind it.
I'm working on it.
You are. You're working very hard and I appreciate it. But I wonder if listeners are like, "Cos you're not reading scripts?"
Very possible. Scripts are very hard to read.
Hey!
They go wide and then they go thin and then they go wide again. What does that mean?
She's not a writer.
I can write them. I just can't read them.
So it's the entire reason I wanted to do this episode.
Turns out she never turned one in.
Oh, so there's no script to be leaked.
There's no script to be leaked.
Cody said, "I failed so hard at that project. I was literally incapable of turning in a Barbie draft. God knows I tried. I think I know why I shit the bed."
When I was first hired for this, I don't think the culture had embraced the Fem or the Bimbo as valid feminist archetypes yet.
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.
That idea of an anti-barbie made a lot of sense given the feminist rhetoric of 10 years ago.
I didn't really have the freedom then to write something that was faithful to the iconography.
They wanted girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie and I couldn't figure it out because that's not what Barbie is.
Honestly, that is a really high order. Trying to think or just like fathom the idea of a movie about Barbie that doesn't fall into a stereotype that doesn't fall into caricatures or just like one note, one off characters.
Or even the main character, Barbie, just being like, "I'm Barbie" and that's it. I made a plastic.
Yeah.
It's so hard to do and thinking into the Barbie that we have today, just the layers upon layers that go into it is just so complex.
And it's so hard for me to even fathom like, "How did you come up with that?"
Yeah. We're also in 2014. This was not intentional on our part but we've somehow made a season that has a through line and is very tethered together.
So in 2014, what wildly successful movie was there?
The Lego movie.
Diablo Cody has been very open about her draft of Barbie and like her attempts at Barbie, how hard it was to obviously right at this time but then she's also bumping up against the Lego movie.
Yeah, which also hit the feels really hard.
Yeah. I get why they brought her on but that wasn't where it was going and then you're battling all of the Lego stuff.
And there was one of the quotes that I found and she's like every time I would be like, "Oh, what about this meta idea?"
It was like, "Well, that's too close to the Lego movie."
You're battling all of the iconography of Barbie and Lego and what toy movies are supposed to be.
So by the end of 2015, Diablo Cody exited the project.
And Sony would bring on three new writers in an attempt to fast track development because they were bumping up against a 2017 release date.
So they bought on these three writers and were like, "You three, right, you're attempt at Barbie and we'll pick the one we like the best."
I'm in that sound I'm coming, but yeah.
So they brought on Bert Royal who wrote Easy Yang in Cruel Summer.
Okay.
Hillary Winston who was co-EP on Community and Happy Endings.
And did a story for the Lego Ninjago movie.
Hey.
And Lindsey Beer helped with Transformers and her remake of Short Circuit.
Three very different writers.
Short circuit.
Interesting.
Yeah, three very different styles.
They would decide to move forward with Hillary Winston's concept, which followed Barbie as she got kicked out of Barbie land for not being perfect enough and lands her in a real world adventure.
Interesting.
Sounds familiar.
Not so perfect Barbie would be played by Amy Schumer.
The studio so excited about the casting center a pair of Monolo Blonics.
Amy Schumer is kind of, that's not-
Remember this is not so perfect Barbie.
It is not so perfect Barbie.
Amy Schumer is quite a choice.
Well, think about what Diablo Cody says, right?
Like they wanted an anti-barbie.
They wanted a girl boss feminist.
Ironically enough, they wanted this funny edgy sort of take of an anti-barbie while still somehow fitting into the iconography that Barbie is.
It's just so hard to square the circle of you want to make an official Barbie movie by addressing all of the feminist viewpoints of what Barbie, I think that doesn't represent.
But like the negative viewpoints of like what Barbie has, you're just kind of highlighting that.
And I can't imagine Mattel being like, so you want to make a movie about our product while making Barbie look bad.
Right. The line is a dot to you.
Like I get why this movie took so long to get made.
It makes me incredibly sad.
Your really threading the teeniest needle to get this movie made.
So Schumer and her sister, Kim Caramele, planned to do some additional rewrites.
But later in 2017, Schumer would make an announcement of her own.
Sadly, I'm no longer able to commit to Barbie due to scheduling conflicts.
The film has so much promise and Sony and Mattel have been great partners.
I'm bummed, but looking forward to see Barbie on the big screen.
So we go back to weird Barbies drawing board again.
This time we're going to bring on director Alita Jones, who has directed episodes for Made for Love, Peacemaker, and Bite or No R.
Hey!
And this go round Barbie would be played by Anne Hathaway.
I think she would be a really good Barbie.
But we're not in the Hathasans yet.
Are we not?
No, not in 2017.
We're not quite there yet.
Really? What is...
When does the Hathasans begin?
Yeah, because I think of her coming off of Princess Diaries.
Yeah, because Brooke Beckmonton was already out and that was like a big movie for her.
I feel like she is like in a perfect time for her.
To tread very lightly.
There was a terrible viral wave that went on in the early 2000s, peaking around Lamez, which was 2012, called Hathahate.
Okay.
It was actually like a weird internet trend where people didn't like Anne Hathaway for some reason.
It was a really toxic time.
If you look at her career, she definitely like took a little bit of a break and now we are in what I've deemed the Hathasans.
She's talked about how Christopher Nolan putting her in her stellar in 2014 was really helpful for her career.
I think she's sort of kept herself going, but there's definitely a dip in her career, which is right around this time.
Obviously, if it was this year, she would have no problem.
Miss, I've got five movies coming out, the new baby onward.
I think she's doing all right.
She's doing fine.
I can see her as a good Barbie.
I agree.
We've got the script.
Yes.
We've got the director.
We've got the actress.
So close.
Sounds like Barbie's full seam ahead, right?
Yeah.
We're going to get this movie in October of 2018.
Sony lost the rights.
I know that whenever they have the rights to a lot of IPs, they kind of have a contract with them.
So, like, for example, Spider-Man, the reason why we have so many Spoodermans or Spooderman adjacent movies is because they have a five-year contract with Marvel and Spider-Man, which is why we have a lot of those.
Is this the same case with Barbie where it's like they signed the contract five years ago, couldn't get their shit together, they lost it.
Basically.
Yeah.
Okay.
[Applause]
So the rights at this point are going to go up for grabs and they go to Warner Brothers.
They get a little WB.
And Lucky Chat Productions partnered up to make the movie happen.
Do you know what company Lucky Chat is?
No, I don't.
Lucky Chat is Margot Robbie's production company with her husband Tom Ackerlick.
Okay. I didn't know that that was the name of their production.
I knew Margot Robbie ever since doing itanya.
She has basically been the producer of every movie that she's a part of.
Yeah.
Lucky Chat has made some real bangers with their most recent weathering nights.
[Laughter]
My quick opinion on weathering heights and I know they put the quotation around it.
Call it something else.
Change the name of the characters and call it weathering heights inspired.
It would be a fine movie in the heights, you know what I'm saying?
The weathering, sure, whatever.
I agree with you.
Yeah.
As the dumb dumb that read weathering heights for the first time right before seeing the movie.
And you're like, whoa.
[Laughter]
Anyukhye.
Yeah.
Weathering heights.
Again, Lucky Chat always makes a beautiful movie.
I will say weathering heights is gorgeous.
Looks amazing.
I have a couple issues with geometry and like angles of certain things, but that's a deep film
nerdism and not like a real criticism.
So going back to their previous film, Margot stated that she did not need to act in Barbie.
She just wanted to be a part of making such a fun film.
But when they brought on writer director, Greta Gerwig, Gerwig thought Robbie was the perfect Barbie.
And thus, Barbie was finally let out of her box.
It was Greta Gerwig and Noah Bambeck.
They wrote it, Greta Gerwig directed it.
Okay, because I know that those two are writing partners for like everything she does, that she directs.
A lot of it, yeah.
Yeah.
They kind of float and do their own thing and then do a ton of projects together.
Okay.
So on July 21st, 2023, Barbie would open and make 1.447 billion globally, making it Warner
Brothers highest grossing film to date.
And yes, many will say that Barbonheimer added to its success.
In a way, yes.
They kind of both helped each other.
Get out of my mouth.
Because you have the film bros who are like, well, she's not tour.
She has come up with these great movies and like had it not been for like the bros going out for a Nolan film.
Yeah.
And then we like, oh, we can do both.
And it doesn't seem less manly.
It just seems like we are cultured swines.
I absolutely think that Barbonheimer helped both of those films.
They did.
Because then you have the crowd that was going for Barbie.
It was like, the guy who made the Adam Bob, do we really want to see that?
I went and did Barbonheimer weekend in at the time I was living in Atlanta, Georgia, not the film capital of US.
I drove probably an hour outside of my way to be able to see Oppenheimer in the correct format.
On your phone.
On my phone.
I sat in the parking lot and sat on my phone.
That was the first time post pandemic that it felt like movies were starting to percolate a little bit and come back a little bit.
And there was something about being in this hour outside of Atlanta at this theater and walking in and seeing people dressed with black blazers with pink t-shirts underneath or like,
dads who were in like all black with like a daughter in, you know, or seeing like the dads that were in pink.
Like it felt like movies were an event again.
Yeah.
It was so great when I, because I saw it in theaters as well, or I saw at least Barbie in theaters.
The amount of people just like dressed in pink.
I don't even think it was like a marketing thing.
It was just like everyone was just on board at that point.
And it was so easy to dress up for Barbie because you just need to find something pink in your closet.
And I had a pink Rocco's modern life shirt.
I mean, it's not Barbie, but it was pink and it felt like-
Right, because it didn't matter.
No, it didn't.
It was like, you are just part of this Barbie movement.
And it felt so cool to be able to look at other people also dressed in pink and go,
"Hey, we're here for this thing together."
Yeah.
Which is my favorite part of going to see a movie and why movies feel important.
Almost like we had all waited a really, really long time for this movie.
Yep.
And you can love it, you can hate it.
But a lot of Barbie- of the previous Barbie is agreed that this was the exact version that we should have brought to the screen.
Sharon Stone would write on America for her Instagram.
Look how far we've come.
Thank you, ladies, for your courage and endurance.
Diablo Cody would say the most successful movie that I've ever written was "Juno."
And that wouldn't get a theatrical release today.
I've 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 that yet.
Amy Schumer would say, "I can't wait to see Margot Robbie's movie. It looks awesome."
There's a new team behind it, and it looks very feminist and cool,
so I will be seeing this movie.
But perhaps it's Anne Hathaway that makes it the most clear.
What's so exciting about what Greta and Margot and the phenomenal team did is they hit a bullseye.
A bullseye that caused the entire world to reach this level of ecstasy.
Now imagine that version, that much energy, that much anticipation, that much emotion.
But it's not the right version.
I actually think of it as a lucky thing that mine didn't get made.
Margot is sublime.
What she's doing as a creative person and a producer is so exciting and inspiring.
The mythic giants they toppled with Barbie that have kept certain narratives in place
that have not allowed opportunities to develop for so many.
They ran straight through those.
Just as a cinema goer and a woman in Hollywood since I was a kid,
I'm thrilled by this development.
If I believed that the version I was attached to could have done that,
I might feel differently about it.
But I genuinely think that their film is the best possible version.
It's easy just to be thrilled and happy for them.
I love watching women kill it, to do so well, so undeniably that they actually had to write new records.
I think that'll probably make things better.
We talk a lot on this podcast about movies we wish had been made.
The reason I chose this episode was to highlight one that did get made against all odds.
We talk about how it's a miracle to get a movie made.
And the history of Barbie proves just that.
And it's a true lightning in a bottle when it does happen at its best version.
Yeah, I do want to point out because in Halfway did talk about how Margot Robbie is the hero in the situation.
She was the one that pushed for Greta Gerwig to be the director for her to write her story.
And in a way, I believe it was her or if there was some other producer who were blocking a lot of the studio notes coming to that project.
Or scenes that they were trying to cut entirely.
They just outright said, "No, we're making sure Greta's movie is getting made, no matter what."
And it ended up working in the end and all of the notes that they were trying to give her probably would have heard the film just never got to her.
It is incredibly hard to make a movie, period, especially when a studio is so heavily involved.
And I get it, studios have images, they have to put out a certain caliber of items.
And then you bring in these autours who have their own specific voice.
And it really is this push and pull of getting it done a specific way.
And I think you can look at Nolan who is very specific and does the epic war movies.
At this point, Nolan had made so many movies.
And I don't know that he really gets questioned, right?
Like, no one is going to see the Odyssey for the story.
No, no one's like, "Oh man, I'm such a homer nerd."
But if you look at Gerwig's trajectory, and if you look at Barbies' trajectory, they're questioned every step of the way.
I don't want to get onto my tiny women in film soap-box every time I have an episode.
But I think Barbie felt like such a massive win because it felt like a win for Barbie, buffer women.
And it was so diverse, right?
Like, I know that Diablo Cody talks about not being able to like write this skinny white woman as a heroine.
But then you saw Barbie and it was just a movie about celebration and goodness and the matriarchy.
But it was just a movie that was a win in every way, shape and form.
I did find the scene that they wanted to cut.
There were many.
There were a lot. The famous one was when she sits down at the bus stop.
She looked at the old woman and she says, "Oh my god, you're beautiful."
There's a reason I didn't put it in my notes.
I actually rewatched Barbie last night and yeah.
Yeah, and when she says that, like, there were so many studio heads that were just like, "Oh, I don't see how that's part of the story.
I don't see how that's relevant."
And they fought like tooth and nail to be like, "This is a good scene. We have to keep it in the movie."
To me that seemed when talking about like, "Oh, it's cool that it was diverse for gender and for race.
It was also diverse for age."
Like to be able to hit all of those boxes.
And yes, at times, it absolutely is heavy-handed in a way that our world really kind of needs it to be.
You can love it or hate it, but they did a lot for cinema.
Yes. And every first of all, a lot of old cinema too. I think that's another part was like...
Yeah.
That got all the film bros. The fact that it opens on an homage to 2001's Space Odyssey.
Do you know why it does that?
I don't.
The history of Barbie being made at the time, they're really were only baby dolls.
I started going down the history of Barbie as a doll rabbit hole and realized that that is a completely different episode.
Yeah, I kinda knew the history of it. I know it was based on a German doll. Ruth had then brought over to the States.
And it was like, "Well, if it's popular there, I'm sure we can make a doll like that here."
What was the German doll? It was like, "Bibby" or something?
Build Lily was a German line of fashion dolls. I think they tried to sue her? Probably.
Also, I think Ruth Handler did a lot for feminism and Barbie and all of that in general.
She has a mildly sorted past, which is another reason we're not doing a deep dive into her life.
Sometimes you can just contribute good things.
So, fun fact about her, I guess not so fun fact, but she had cancer and it really didn't make her feel as confident and as great as she wanted to feel.
And so she actually came out with a line of these prosthetic bras.
Her legacy, regardless of the rest, was that she really wanted everyone to feel their best, which ironically, Gerwig captures in a way that the more you read about Ruth Handler or the history of Barbie,
the layers of the Barbie movie are so deep that on a rewatch, I'm always just like, "Ah, here's this other thing. I'm never gonna find it now."
But there was this other baby doll. Baby dolls were the big thing before Barbie.
There was one that people will get mad and be like, "Oh, Barbie wasn't the first. It was this one."
It wasn't a small, thin doll like Barbie was. It was closer to a baby doll, but had a bra and a girdle and all these things.
And so that was sort of the, I want to say like, transitional doll before Barbie.
But they're kind of like the paper doll.
Paper dolls were also part of the inspiration for Barbie doll.
But no, this was a like actual like toy.
Okay.
The reason that Barbie opens with Barbie being like the monolith is because that was actually the history of it.
Yeah.
[applause]
I think a big like thank you has to go to the Barbie movie because if you look at where we are now, the momentum and the energy that it gave to the movies.
Yeah.
This summer we finally got the live action masters of the universe.
We got a he-man movie.
And aren't you so excited for October when we get the matchbox movie with John Cena?
It does remind me.
So when the movie came out, Randall Parks, he is quoted saying something like movie studios are going to get the wrong ideas out of the Barbie movie.
Oh, yeah. I just feel like in general this industry is taking the wrong lessons.
For example, Barbie is a massive blockbuster and the idea is make more movies about toys.
No, make more movies by and about women.
That's the one.
Yeah.
I'm like, that's what made Barbie so successful and they took the wrong lessons.
That's the bigger discussion that I think Barbie brings up is that it took 37 years from initial announcement to screen release.
And the lesson that society took away was toys.
Toy movies. We need more toy movies.
I wanted to do this episode now for multiple reasons.
One, I'm always going to try and find a script that's going to highlight women and female ideas.
But also it does feel like we're percolating in a hopeful time of things.
Like yes, we got masters and yes, we are getting matchbox.
But in a way that we are also getting a lot of original ideas.
And I think that's the beauty of the Barbie movie is, yeah, cool.
Look at this IP.
Barbie wasn't actually successful because of Barbie, the toy.
Barbie was successful because it has heart.
It has emotion.
You laugh.
You cry.
I cried all my black eyeliner that I wore for Oppenheimer and to my light pink sweatshirt.
And it is an unforgettable movie whether you love it or hate it.
And that was a similar thing that I brought up with the legal movie.
It wasn't really the Legos that made it successful.
It was this idea of the father and son mending their relationship when they have straight so far apart.
And that's the thing that we connected to.
So when I came to Barbie, the thing that I came out of that movie was the speeches.
What was I made for?
What were you made for just trying to find yourself in that I think is a very relatable thing.
This is going to sound weird.
But there's an episode of SpongeBob.
Wow.
Hey.
Hard left.
I have written an oral presentation in college about a SpongeBob episode, which I thought was actually pretty good.
And how it relates to Barbie?
Well, it was actually Edgar Allan Poe in the modern.
I'm here.
He's gone down the structure.
Anyway, there's an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants where Squidward finds other Squidwards.
And he moves into the neighborhood of like other Squidwards that are like him.
He thinks that this is the best place on Earth.
He thinks like, oh, everything's perfect.
And then as he lives his life there, it becomes monotonous.
And he realizes, oh, perfection is not what we were trying to go for.
And he becomes miserable.
And he goes crazy because of it.
And I feel like this is what happens is like the Barbie world is perfect in every single way.
And then you have that one moment of existential dread where she's like,
you guys ever think about dying?
And it just like unravels from there.
I don't think about that in the perfect way at all.
I think about it in the human way, right?
Like why is Barbie so great as a toy?
Is it great because the toy is great?
Or is it great because of the story that the kid puts behind it?
There was a quote from Diablo Cody of like, I used to play with Barbies as a kid.
Those were the first movies I cast.
Yeah.
Because it's the human component to the toy.
And I do think that that movies like Barbie are going to be the future of cinema,
where it's the human story that matters.
Like yes, we can use AI or you can use whatever you want to use to make your movie.
You can say it's 100% practical and sneak in CG.
At the end of the day, the most successful movies and the ones that we watch over and over and over again,
regardless of IP or original idea are those with a good human story.
And I do think that the Barbie we got was the lightning in a bottle best version we could have gotten.
So please for the love of God, leave it alone.
Don't do a sequel.
As we talk right now as of this recording, the sequel is stalling out.
And I don't think I've ever been so happy to go, oh, I hope something sits in development purgatory forever.
Yeah, I can't imagine what the sequel would even be.
But I know they ended it with like, oh, they're going to put Barbie into the real world somehow or she's going to stay there.
You're not going to go through the same journey.
You're just going to have like a fish out of water comedy with Margot Robbie.
And Warner Brothers co-chairs, Pam Abdy and Michael Leluca confirmed all of this was going on.
They said we have a rights deal with Mattel in place.
And we've made a series of big offers to try and finalize deals to make the next Barbie film.
So we've been unable to reach an agreement thus far, which to me makes sense.
If you're making a sequel, you need to keep that team.
If you're making a completely different movie, then sure swap out the creative team behind it.
In 2024, Margot Robbie stated, it's funny that the knee jerk reaction in this day and age for everyone to immediately is to ask about a sequel.
I don't think it was like this 20 years ago.
This wasn't designed to be a trilogy.
Everything went into Barbie and that's how Greta works.
She finishes every movie on empty, feeling like she could never make another movie because she's put everything she had into that one.
So I don't know what it would take to fill that cup up again for her.
Or for us, I think Warner would also agree.
I don't know what more could even look like.
We want to make more films that have the same effect that Barbie has.
The thing, and going back to the Randall Park quote, is like, we shouldn't be demanding another Barbie movie or more toy movies.
We should be demanding another Greta Gerwig movie, which I know we're getting with the Narnia movie, which I'm very interested to see what she does with that.
And like, just give her big, well-known properties to see what she's capable of doing with that.
Because if she's able to do that with Barbie, what is she going to do with something as big of a title as Narnia?
And that's the thing that we should be pushing for more, which I guess we're getting anyways.
I am excited to see what she does with Narnia, but I don't think it will have the same effect.
If you think about where we started in this episode and the original one of like, Barbies owner will get everything they ever dreamed.
Or like, Barbie getting kicked out of Barbie land.
It's clear that Greta did her research.
And this movie was truly 37 years in the making.
With Narnia, we've had multiple remakes in our lifetime.
So I'm not saying that it won't be great.
I also am very excited to see it.
But I think because Barbie took this long to make and was this well crafted and this well thought out, I think that's the moral of what we should be taking away.
We want to see good movies and I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but perhaps it's Ken that said it best this year when Ryan Grozzling was at a New York screening for Project Hail Mary.
He said to the audience, it's not your job to keep theaters open.
It's our job to make things that make it worth you coming out.
It's been reported on with like, Gen Z is not going to the movies is like, no, there was nothing that really Gen Z was excited for and it wasn't until we learn, well, I don't know if we learn the lessons from it.
But we saw what happened when you put Gen Z in the driver's seat and they made back rooms, they made obsessions.
And because that like, you had that audience finally want to go out and see that movie.
They wanted to be part of the conversation. They wanted to actually go to the theaters because they were excited to see something that was good.
It wasn't attached to any IP, although you could kind of argue back rooms is its own IP.
Yeah, but still it was an original idea, especially obsession like that is not attached to anything.
And yet it did gangbusters in the theater because it related to Gen Z and why did it relate to Gen Z?
It was a good story. It was a good story, but it also was it was made by someone who is Gen Z and they had a story that a lot of us could relate to was like, you're fun after someone.
They are not reciprocal and what do you do to get it back and all of a sudden you're in a monkey's position?
Take away their free will.
Yeah, which he has said that the movie was inspired by the monkey paw tree house of horror's episode of The Simpsons.
I think that our industry really likes to separate people, to separate ideas. Is it IP? Is it original? Is it Gen Z?
And that's not what makes a good movie, a good movie.
Going off of the monkey's paw thing, what I was in college in my writing class in particular, my writing professor who was like the head of our theater department who became very much a personal mentor.
His name was Randy Wyatt. He is no longer with us and I know that he had like a great effect on a lot of us, but he said that everything comes back to 17 plotlines.
Everything man versus man, man versus nature, but there is no in theory, holy original idea anymore.
It is how you choose to tell a story in a unique way and that's what we lost for a really long time by saying, hey, all we want is franchises.
We love Marvel. We love superheroes, superheroes, superheroes, superheroes. That's not why we all loved an era of Marvel.
We didn't care if the big bad was doing something terrible. You wanted to see Steve Rogers get a happy ending.
You wanted to see all of the struggles that these characters were going through. You wanted to see them succeed in a unique way.
I did a recent rewatch of the third Guardians of the Galaxy and I forgot how sad that movie is.
Oh yeah, no, that's a one time watch for me.
That was awful, but I saw and remembered like, as I saw in theaters, I was like, oh yeah, that was a really good movie.
And not because I got to see the Guardians again, it was because of rocket spec story and just how well crafted that was.
You want to be able to see yourself in a movie to see some part of a story that feels like you can connect with.
Yeah, there's the James kind of it all, but Superman movie where he has a speech at the end where he's like, I am a human.
Despite him having superpowers, he's like, I am human and that's the best part of me.
Yeah, and the reason that that movie did so well besides that like obviously like, I'm human is the kindness is punk rock.
At the end of the day, our world is pretty dark and we're looking for things that make us feel connected like Barbie did.
We're looking for things that make us feel human like Barbie did.
So we as an industry just need to make good movies and stop worrying about the money aspect, which I get it.
It's an incredibly expensive economy, but just what were we made for?
[Applause]
[Music]
And now is our time for our favorite moment of the episode.
Apart where we tell you what we're watching and judging you for what you're not watching.
That is how that goes.
It is.
Full of judgment.
We tried to remain impartial during the episode.
We save it all up for right now.
What do you want to tell the audience to watch?
I have two technically, 1.5.
The point five of it is that a couple weeks ago I recommended Hades Town and I actually got to go see it in the theater.
The way that musicals on the stage were meant to be seen.
The way that Christopher Nolan intended for Hades Town to be seen.
I think it's a beautiful pro shot.
I highly recommend.
Originally I recommended it ahead of time because it was only in the theaters for five days.
And because it has done so well, including beating Hamilton.
They've extended its run.
You've got more chances to go see Hades Town.
I got my tickets in advance and I was still in Roby.
Wow.
Cinema is coming back in such a way that even a Broadway show is packed.
I think the theater is the local big screen TV where it's not just about the movies.
We had Beyonce and Taylor Swift release their concert films.
It's about community.
And feeling together the actual recommendation I have for this week.
I saw the invite which was directed by Olivia Wilde.
Is this her first feature?
I know she's done a lot of short films before that.
Oh, so I believe her first feature was Booksmart.
That's right. She did do books for it.
This was her fourth.
Oh, okay.
I don't know the order of two and three.
But I do know that two or three was don't worry darling.
That's right.
And that was a movie that everyone who knows me sent me that trailer and was like,
this is a movie for you.
Look, it's so lexy coded and then I saw it and I was like, what do you all think of me?
We just think you're Florence Pew.
I'll take the PPP comments all the time.
It was not a big fan of that movie.
So I went into the invite there at trepidatiously.
But I got texts that were like, hey, go see this movie.
This is actually a movie you'll really love.
It's giving a lot of Virginia wolf vibes.
Yeah.
And it's not really an original idea.
I believe it is based off of a Spanish film.
I think Seth Rogen is, you know, does his good funny thing in Olivia Wilde.
Like I was completely blown away by their performances.
It feels a little bit like a play.
It is for actors in one set.
But the creativity of shots and the storytelling within the cinematography is so good.
I can't remember the last time I've heard an audience like laugh out loud like side splitting about not necessarily a joke.
But just how real something felt like it felt like a very communal experience.
I honestly might not have felt that connected in at the Eater Sense Barbie.
And people walked out like talking to each other.
It was great.
If you have the invite highly recommend seeing it in theaters,
even though it is this very quaint small story, it is weirdly connective.
You of all people, I think, will really like it.
There's a lot of fun mirror play with cinematography, which I know.
I do love the mirrors, but there's just a lot of really creative shots in storytelling.
Your turn.
All right.
I will also give a half recommendation to go see minions and monsters.
Did you see it?
It is a love letter to old Hollywood that I sent you a text and said it was the one minions and go with you.
I know.
It is a love letter to old Hollywood, but my true recommendation,
because I feel like the minions don't really need a recommendation because they are the most influential movie in the past decade.
All right.
It's podcast.
I disagree, but carry on.
Not Barbie.
Minions.
Definitely.
No, the movie that I'm recommending is Avatar Aang, The Last Airbender.
And I know that there was some issues where the movie got leaked.
And because of that, they decided to kind of do away with the theatrical release.
They went straight to Paramount Plus.
The whole thing, I think there's like a few select theaters that might be doing a theatrical thing.
But I did get to see it on Paramount Plus, and I will say that the animation is gorgeous.
I think this is a great companion to the Avatar world.
It's like the perfect segue between Avatar, The Last Airbender, and The Legend of Cora.
Because where The Legend of Cora starts is long after Avatar Aang has passed away.
Most of the show takes place in Republic City, where it is a central hub where all benders and even non-benders live in harmony with each other.
And the movie is about like him putting that city together while also dealing with the existential crisis that like he's still The Last Airbender.
And how is he going to reintroduce airbending into this world now?
And there's a pretty great villain who is voiced by Dave Batista.
- Nice.
- It's in so many attempts of like making Avatar in live action, especially with the Netflix series.
And long ago with M Night Shyamalan's movie, it just seems to continually fall flat.
And I feel like the television show on Netflix is just not doing it.
And the thing is like these kids are then falling back to just watching the original cartoon, which is great.
- Yeah.
- And I feel like your media is failing.
Like your TV show is failing when the thing you're trying to portray only reminds you of the better thing that's already out there.
This movie I think like really brought back the spirit of Avatar The Last Airbender.
It really tied into both the elements that we saw in Legend of Cora and the original.
You get to see the gang back together again.
And it's neat to see them as like adults.
And I think this is a really great companion to all of that.
And especially after watching the newest season of the Netflix show.
- Well, because the Netflix show is a retelling of the cartoon, right?
- Mm-hm.
- As a young woman who wrote fan fiction in middle school.
- Is that we don't need reboot and remakes.
We need different chunks of a story.
Like if you want to use IP, then fill in the dots of what's missing.
- Yeah, something that has satisfied me like after the show has been done for a long time.
There is a series of like comic books that have come out.
There have been graphic novels that come out.
I was gifted a book of short adventures that the gang went on that were like not included in the original trilogy.
Speaking of fan fiction, there was a really great fan-made graphic novel of what if it was the water nation that was trying to take over the world.
And Saka and Katara are actually like the evil ones.
And Zugo and Azula, they're the ones who find the Avatar.
And the Firenations are actually the ones that are being oppressed.
- Interesting. Avatar, what if?
- Yeah, that has been satisfying me more so than like the live action.
- Yep, that's my recommendation. Avatar, Aang.
- Cool.
- You can find us on our social media pages. We are at development purgatory, unless you're on Blue Sky. That is @dev purgatory.
There I am posting pretty much every single day with like concept art, especially like plastic man has been a lot of fun putting out stuff for there.
Like anything that's like really visual, especially like comic book heroes.
Like there's so much that we can put out there that is a really nice companion to the actual episode.
There are many ways that you can support the episode. You can like, subscribe.
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You can find us on Patreon, Development Purgatory, where for just $5 a month, you can get all of our episodes, including the episodes featuring David.
If you have any recommendations for future episodes, you can email us. We are development purgatory@gmail.com.
There's many ways that you can support us, see us, contact us, do all the things.
And the last thing that I have to say is, bye Barbie.
- Bye Ken. Did you bring your roll of plates?
- I literally go nowhere without them.