Diablo Cody Talks Scrapped Barbie Script

Movies

In an interview with GQ Magazine, Diablo Cody reveals the fate of her Barbie script (the one which would have starred Amy Schumer.) Check out an excerpt here:

“I think I know why I shit the bed,” she said. “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. 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 ten 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.”

In short, Sony and Schumer wanted a punchy Barbie-hating movie. That’s unsurprising, but it’s nice to hear from someone who didn’t want to do that. When this movie was announced, that’s exactly the type of product I was afraid of. I’ve always loved Barbie and don’t have the gender-related, body-related, or other issues with the doll that others do. I’m still a bit concerned and will be until I see it, but the final movie looks much better than Cody’s reports.