Warner Bros. provided a super-eventful presentation at CinemaCon 2023 Tuesday morning. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav gave an impassioned talk to theater owners about the studio’s passion for film, footage from highly anticipated films such as “Dune: Part Two” were screened and even “The Color Purple” producer Oprah Winfrey made her debut on the CinemaCon stage. The one movie that stole the show, however, was Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” And, Ryan Gosling, an actor not known for enjoying press obligations, unintentionally stole the spotlight from Gerwig and co-stars Margot Robbie and America Ferrera.
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Wearing a pink jacket and a t-shirt with “Greta Gerwig” in Barbie font across it, Gosling jokes that before being offered the role he only knew Ken from afar. He didn’t know him from within. More importantly, he doubted his “Kenergy” when he was offered the role. He didn’t see it, but Robbie, a producer on the film, and Gerwig conjured this out of him. He adds, “I was living his life and then one day I was bleaching my hair blonde hair and shaving my legs.”
Gosling says the whole project came on like a pink fever dream and he began to wonder why he’d wake up with fake tanner in his sheets. He also gives credit to the entire cast noting they are “all brilliant” and that to be conjured in such a way was “really special.”
Robbie recruited Gerwig to work on the project after developing it for a number of years. The “Lady Bird” director says she and longtime collaborator and co-writer Noah Baumbach were making each other laugh writing the script and then made each other cry at the end. Gerwig reveals Baumbach was considering directing and jokes that she said, “Step aside.” This one was hers.
Calling the project a “dream come true,” Gerwig says the film was inspired by technicolor musicals and, in something of a surprise, disco.
“We had a bunch of references,” Gerwig says. ‘Disco was a big part of this. This assumption is when people get together they want to dance.”
The Oscar-nominated director also says she cried the first time she was on the “Barbie” set. She adds, “The whole thing was incredibly moving.” The detail was incredible and “the people who made the action vehicles had just made the Batmobile and were excited to get that pink paint out.”
The set was so popular that Robbie says people from other movies including the latest “Fast and the Furious” would come to the Barbie set because it was a “dopamine set” because everyone was having fun. She adds, “People would tear up and get very excited.”
Gosling adds, “I can’t believe I’m saying this but now I know what Dorothy felt like” visiting that set.” The “La La Land” star also adds that, unlike other characters in the film, Ken has no sense of humor. It was therefore hard for him not to laugh on set. Greta joked that even she ruined takes because she was laughing so loudly behind the monitor.
The new extended preview screened at CinemaCon began with a new Dua Lipa song (the mega pop star has a role in the film) and finds Barbie (Robbie) realizing that her previously perfect existence is starting to change. In one instance, she falls off the top of her Barbie Dream House for the first time and then wakes up one day to discover she has no uplifted heels. Her feet are horrifyingly flat. After a visit to Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who lives up on a hill away from the rest of the Barbie and Kens, she realizes she needs to leave Barbie land and cross the mountains into the real world. She’s shocked when she finds out Ken has stowed away in her car to accompany her.
In the “real world,” the film appears to become a somewhat predictable – but hilarious – fish out of water story. Barbie makes friends with Gloria (America Ferrera) and a young girl we assume is her daughter. Meanwhile, the FBI and the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) are trying to discover why Barbie left the confines of Barbie Land and how to get her back there. Everyone eventually does go back including Gloria and her daughter. There was a very funny bit where Ken refuses to believe a woman in a hospital is a doctor and assumes she is a nurse there to assist him because he is somehow a doctor.
Overall, the preview played like gangbusters and buoyed the increasing buzz that Gerwig has crafted something special with the toy property. We’d assume the new preview will hit theaters and the interwebs sometime in May.
“Barbie” arrives in theaters on July 21.
