Barbie is now making its way to theaters around the world, and soon enough we’ll know whether it is a contender for film of the year as many have speculated. Positive early reviews and a massive marketing strategy giving everyone FOMO seem to have set the stage for exactly that.
However, before the movie had even been greenlit by Warner Bros., producer Margot Robbie had to formulate the perfect elevator pitch to convince the studio to let her make a movie about the most famous doll in the world. What she said worked, but her ambitious comparisons will have Robbie wishing, more than anyone else, that the movie does incredibly well at the box office over the weekend.
“Maybe I was overselling it,” the Aussie actress said about the auspicious meeting. In an interview with Collider, Robbie revealed that her strategy was to refer to times in the past when a powerhouse director took an apparently silly idea and turned it into a culturally defining and commercially successful movie. “Dinosaurs” and “Spielberg” was one of the examples.
Bit of a high standard you set for yourself there, Margot. “I told them they would make a billion dollars,” she continued, realizing that maybe she had set herself up to disappoint.
“We had a movie to make, okay?!.”
With a buzz unlike anything we’ve seen in the past five years, Barbie could actually fulfill all of its producer’s promises. One billion might be a spot reserved for Disney movies and Avatar, but if there is a superpowered team that can take their film sky-high it’s Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig.
Deadline projected the film to open to box office numbers anywhere between $90 million and $125 million domestically, with an additional $165 million internationally. Avengers: Endgame currently holds the record for the biggest debut of all time, crossing the billion mark on opening weekend.
Barbie is already showing in some countries, but its wide release in the U.S. happens this Friday. Read We Got This Covered’s review of the film here.