“We had a movie to make, okay?!”
Before Barbie Land, there was Isla Nublar.
Barbie star and producer Margot Robbie has revealed that she pitched the movie to Mattel and Warner Bros. by comparing it to Steven Spielberg’s massive sci-fi-adventure flick Jurassic Park.
“I think my pitch in the greenlight meeting was the studios have prospered so much when they’re brave enough to pair a big idea with a visionary director,” Robbie told Collider in a new interview. “And then I gave a series of examples like, ‘dinosaurs and Spielberg,’ that and that, that and that — pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years.”
But the actress took things a heavy step further. “And I was like, ‘Now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig,'” she added, noting that she may have tossed out a mammoth box office projection to seal the deal. “I think I told them that it’d make a billion dollars, which maybe I was overselling, but we had a movie to make, okay?!”
Robbie proceeded to praise the 1993 classic starring Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern. “Can you imagine that first meeting? They’re like, ‘Dinosaurs? I don’t know, I mean, yeah? That might turn out kind of silly,'” she said. “And then here we are decades later being like, ‘That’s the greatest movie ever.'” (The dino epic has grossed $1.1 billion worldwide and hatched a handful of sequels.)
And hey, should moviegoers flock to Barbie Land, Robbie’s estimate may not be a total oversell. According to various box office projections, Barbie — which also stars Ryan Gosling, Will Ferrell, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, Michael Cera, and a slew of other A-list names — is expected to rake in between $95 million and $110 million on its July 21 opening weekend, which would make it one of the biggest openings of the year.
Barbie has dominated the zeitgeist long before its theatrical release, with leaked set photos and trailers pushing anticipation to a fever pitch. Robbie addressed the fervor in EW’s recent Around the Table with the cast and director Gerwig (embedded above — and recorded before the actors’ strike).
“I think Barbie’s been capturing people’s attention since the day she was invented,” Robbie said. “She is an icon, but she’s a very complicated one. There’s been times when Barbie has been ahead of her times, and there’s been times when she’s been behind her times, but she’s always been evolving. I feel like this movie’s the next evolution.”
Barbie and her pink convertible cruise into theaters July 21.
