‘Barbie’ Sequel in “Early Stages” as Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach Settle on Story Idea (Exclusive)
As Barbie painted the world pink and covered the box office in a whopping $1.4 billion of green, an urgent question emerged and was lobbed at everyone involved: What about a sequel?
It’s a query that even someone as adorably clueless as Ken could’ve come up with and one that Warner Bros. and Mattel were understandably eager to answer with a resounding, “Yes, please!” as it became the indisputable pop culture phenomenon of 2023. But the answer has always rested with the Barbie brain trust of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach even if, at times, a franchise seemed inevitable.
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The partners in life and creativity — they co-wrote the script and snagged an Oscar nomination for their collaboration — were clear in pursuing a follow-up if and only if they could find the story to support it. At least that is what director Gerwig repeatedly stated. “My North Star is, what do I deeply love? What do I really care about? What’s the story underneath this story?” Gerwig said as she accepted Time’s Women of the Year honors in March 2024. “If I find the undertow, then we get it. If I don’t find an undertow, there’s no more.”
The Hollywood Reporter has learned from a well-placed source that Gerwig and Baumbach have been swept up in an undertow and hatched an idea for the sequel, having already brought it to Warner Bros. While it’s said to be in “early stages,” it is understood that finding the story has opened the door for deal talk which, again, is early, another source with direct knowledge confirms.
A rep for the studio and a rep for the filmmakers pushed back. “There is no legitimacy to this reporting,” says Gerwig and Baumbach’s rep, while a Warner Bros. representative adds, “THR’s reporting is inaccurate.”
Should a deal make, the focus would be hammering out a script and lining up schedules in order to do so. Baumbach is hard at work on postproduction for his next film, an untitled and star-packed coming-of-age project for Netflix. Expected for next year, the film stars Gerwig, George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Riley Keough, Jim Broadbent, Patrick Wilson and Emily Mortimer (who co-wrote the script). Meanwhile, Gerwig is in preproduction readying her own movie for Netflix, a Chronicles of Narnia adaptation that producer Amy Pascal recently described as very “rock and roll.”
Per one source, Baumbach would get started on writing the Barbie sequel, with the two passing it back and forth as they typically do. They confirmed during a WGA West Q&A moderated by Judd Apatow in October 2023 that their creative process finds them writing separately from one another and sharing drafts along the way. “Then we listen to hear if the other person’s laughing,” Gerwig said at the time.
As for what the sequel story could be, that’s being kept under wraps, and it’s highly unlikely that any details will leak from Barbie Land to the real world. “I find whenever I’ve shared ideas too early, they become bad, then the movie’s not going to be any good. I don’t like to talk about things too early or pitch things or show treatments too early because it feels like it’s gonna somehow wreck what the movie is,” Gerwig said on that same WGA panel.
As for Barbie herself, Margot Robbie was the driving force in getting Barbie off the ground as star and producer through her LuckyChap banner. And as the film received critical and awards acclaim, with eight Oscar nominations including best picture, she lobbed compliments at her director. “She cracked the code on this film, as only she could,” Robbie said in February. “It is such a singular vision, and Greta brought so much humanity, creativity, inspiration, magic and joy to Barbie.”
The film wound up winning one Academy Award — Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell triumphed for best original song with their chart-topper “What Was I Made For” — in addition to a slew of other trophies during a very busy awards season. Robbie starred alongside Ryan Gosling as Ken, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera and Ariana Greenblatt, among many others.
The story found its title character living a picture-perfect existence in Barbieland until her world got turned upside down one night with worries about mortality during an otherwise joyful dance party. The woes continued, sending Robbie’s Barbie to the real world on a life-changing adventure (with Ken in tow).
In her THR review, critic Lovia Gyarkye, like many who reviewed the film upon its release, cited Gerwig for finding a sharp story in an iconic toy. “Gerwig delights in the richness and weirdness of her material in this clever send-up of Barbie dolls and their fraught legacy. It’s impressive how much the director, known for her shrewd and narratively precise dramas, has fit into a corporate movie,” wrote Gyarkye who singled out Gerwig and Baumbach’s “smart screenplay.”
In addition to Barbie, Gerwig and Baumbach collaborated on the scripts for Mistress America and Frances Ha, both of which he directed. Meanwhile, Gerwig wrote and directed Little Women and Lady Bird (landing Oscar nods for each of those scripts), and Baumbach wrote and directed White Noise, Marriage Story, The Meyerowitz Stories, While We’re Young, Greenberg, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Margot at the Wedding and The Squid and the Whale, among other films. He received Oscar nods for his work on Marriage Story and The Squid and the Whale in addition to Barbie.
Their collaboration on Barbie laid the groundwork for it becoming the most successful film of the year, finishing No. 1 at the box office. So, the sequel question always seemed less, “What about?” and something more along the lines of, “When?”
“There’s a tone and a humor and a joy, and obviously the world is so beautiful,” Gerwig told People ahead of the first film’s release when asked about a second installment. “I want to go back to Barbie Land.”
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