With Barbie the film on release to huge anticipation there’s been much talk about how Margot Robbie pitched Barbie to the studio. One of the productions companies behind the film is Lucky Chap Entertainment which is Robbie’s own company which has been a number of successful and award winning films including Promising Young Woman, I, Tonya and the underrated Birds of prey so she is ore than familiar with pitching a film project.
Robbie has admitted she got a little carried away with her pitch telling the studio, ‘my pitch in the green-light meeting was the studios have prospered so much when they’re brave enough to pair a big idea with a visionary director,” she said of using Oscar- nominee Greta Gerwig. ‘And then I gave a series of examples like, ‘dinosaurs and Spielberg,’ that and that, that and that — pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years. And I was like, ‘And now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig.’ And I think I told them that it’d make a billion dollars, which maybe I was overselling, but we had a movie to make, okay?!”
Of interest too is that Margot Robbie had not put herself forward to play the title role. ‘I didn’t want whoever our director was going to be – Greta being the first choice, but if she had said no – I didn’t want our director to feel pressured to put me in the role,’
So I was just really upfront about like, ‘I won’t be offended in the slightest. We could go to anyone. Whatever story you want to tell and whoever you want that to be, I support that. I’ve got skin in the game as a producer, I don’t have skin in the game as an actor, so be free with that choice.’ And she was like, ‘Shut up, I want to write this for you.’ And I was like, ‘You might feel pressured to say that, but …’ and we did that dance for a while. And then eventually I just accepted that she did want me to play the role, and then she wrote it. She wrote me in and she wrote Ryan [Gosling] in, and it was our names printed in the script from the get-go: ‘Barbie – Margot, Ken – Ryan Gosling.’”
……and that’s how Margot Robbie pitched Barbie to the studio!
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source:deadline
