Thanks to an A-team cast and crew, a box office competition for the ages, and generally one of the best big-budget marketing campaigns in recent history, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie opened to a whopping $162 million in its debut weekend, the biggest opening of the year and the highest-grossing debut for any female director in history.
Barbie balances absurdist comedy with heart-wrenching meditations on existing as a woman in patriarchy (with plenty of old-school musical numbers to boot), somehow managing to imbue an obvious Mattel ad with real emotion and fun. In a world where it seems like even a bad movie that makes a lot of money is destined to start a franchise, you may be asking:
Will There Be a Barbie Sequel?
Ryan Gosling, the Ken to Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie, recently told Entertainment Tonight that he’d work with Robbie and Gerwig on anything, opening the door to a Ken sequel (welcome news, if you ask us, since his portrayal of the bleach-blond himbo was one of the movie’s highlights).
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Robbie, however, isn’t so sure about beginning a live-action Barbie series, even though Mattel clearly has plans to keep making toy-inspired films. “It could go a million different directions from this point,” the actor, who also produced the film, told Time. “But I think you fall into a bit of a trap if you try and set up a first movie whilst also planning for sequels.”
On a similar note, Gerwig — known for her witty portrayals of young womanhood in films like Lady Bird and Little Women — admitted that “sometimes these movies can have a quality of hegemonic capitalism” and that she had to work to instill her voice into Barbie. Speaking to The New York Times, she revealed that she has no plans to make a sequel — as of now.
“At this moment, it’s all I’ve got,” she said. “I feel like that at the end of every movie, like I’ll never have another idea and everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I did. I wouldn’t want to squash anybody else’s dream but for me, at this moment, I’m at totally zero.”
Looks like for now, you should revel in the original Barbie — though we can always hope for more Matchbox Twenty covers from Ryan Gosling.