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Amy Schumer In Talks To Play 'Barbie' In Live-Action Movie
Comedian Amy Schumer at Tribeca Talks in New York City (Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images for the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival)
Amy Schumer, your favorite White Feminist™ role model, is reportedly circling a starring role in the first ever live-action Barbie movie.
Variety reports that Schumer is in "early talks" to play the title role in the Sony flick, which is slated to open in summer 2018. According to Variety, the film's storyline will be "in the vein of Splash, Enchanted and Big," with poor Barbie being forced to take on rough-and-tumble reality after getting cast out of her plastic fantastic world for not being perfect enough. Sounds like as good a place to start as any for bringing the world's best-selling doll to screen.
The film will be produced by Walter F. Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and Amy Pascal. Parkes and MacDonald purchased the rights from Mattel in 2014.
Deadline reports that after numerous drafts of the film by numerous female scribes, "this one came together like a bolt from the blue after [screenwriter Hilary] Winston and the producers cracked the code with a funny empowerment take that sparked the interest of Schumer and made her want to fit it into her crowded movie schedule." The film is based on an idea and screenplay by Winston, which Schumer and her sister Kim Caramele are expected to rewrite.
The Barbie brand brings in $3 billion annually, but— as any girl who grew up cutting the heads off her comically-proportioned plastic dolls knows—the Mattel toy brand is more than just big business, it's also a cultural touchstone. Barbie, as author M.G. Lord posited in her biography of the doll, is “the most potent icon of American popular culture in the late twentieth century."
The buxom blonde's brand success has spurred decades of controversy, as Deborah G. Felder detailed in A Century of Women:
To feminists, Barbie is a sinister symbol of oppression, whom protesters in 1972 alleged encouraged girls "to see themselves solely as mannequins, sex objects, or housekeepers." To others, Barbie is a feminist pioneer who, unlike other dolls like Betsy Wetsy and Tiny Tears, taught independence and career possibilities rather than nurturing.
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A search for a director for the forthcoming film is underway, and Deadline reports that it's likely to be a woman, thank god.
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