Filmmaker and actress Greta Gerwig hasn’t read a single word that film critics wrote about Barbie, her blockbuster inspired by the Mattel doll, which was released in theaters in July.
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In an interview with Variety, the director commented on how she handled the film’s reception. “Maybe next year, around February, I’ll sit down with a portfolio to read everything they said about the film. Right now, the film is still very fresh in my heart,” she commented.
Even with the commercial success of Barbie, which earned more than US$1.4 billion at the global box office and remains the most profitable feature film of 2023, it is “difficult to assimilate” for the filmmaker.
“My God, I don’t even know when it hit me. I always had the hope that the film would connect with a lot of people, and a certain intuition that it would, but Barbie is not in a pre-ordained category. We had optimistic box office forecasts, but no one knew what they concretely meant,” he recalled. “It wasn’t until about the second weekend that I thought, ‘Well, this is going well.'”
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Furthermore, Greta also spoke about the phenomenon caused by the alleged rivalry between the films Barbie and Oppenheimer, also known as Barbenheimer.
“Chris Nolan is one of my heroes, a true author,” he said. Regarding the unexpected combination that formed Barbenheimer, Gerwig also gave her two cents: “It was a strange combination, but it’s kind of like one of those matinees where you watch three movies a day.”
Barbie, co-starring names like Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, America Ferrera and Will Ferrell, is now showing in Brazilian cinemas. The film reached the US$1.4 billion mark at the global box office.