Margot Robbie is ready to rake in $77 million in wage and field workplace bonuses for her work on the billion-dollar film, Barbie, in accordance with a brand new report in Variety.
It’s a sum that the beleaguered A.V. Club dubbed “obscene” earlier than admitting that, yeah, Robbie really had loads to do with the movie’s outsized success.
The two-time Oscar nominee not solely anchored the audacious movie together with her underrated efficiency, however she’s additionally the individual liable for convincing Warner Bros. at hand the reins of what may have simply been an open-and-shut train in product placement to a inventive pressure like Greta Gerwig within the first place.
There’s no method the history-making movie would have been nearly as good, as standard, or as idiosyncratic with out Robbie’s imaginative and prescient. In truth, I’d argue that there’s a case to be made that Margot Robbie deserves much more cash for Barbie’s history-making international field workplace run. Barbie merely wouldn’t have hit so onerous with out Margot Robbie.
The model of Barbie that premiered in cinemas in the summertime of 2023 was removed from Mattel’s first stab at bringing their iconic doll to the silver display.
In 2009, Mattel tried to get a Barbie film off the bottom with Universal earlier than the deal fell aside. In the 2010s, Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody, producing powerhouse Amy Pascal, comic Amy Schumer, and even Anne Hathaway all swirled the venture at numerous factors, none of whom have been profitable of their makes an attempt to earn a inexperienced gentle to enter manufacturing.
Then in 2019, Margot Robbie and her manufacturing firm, LuckyChap Entertainment stepped in.
LuckyChap Entertainment was based in 2014 by Robbie, Tom Ackerley (who’s now her husband), and buddies Josey McNamara and Sophia Kerr. In a 2020 dialog with The Hollywood Reporter, Robbie, Ackerley, and McNamara recalled wistfully craving to make their very own ardour initiatives throughout their early years on units. Robbie remembered particularly seeing “a gap” within the scripts she was studying as an ingenue chasing warmth after her breakthrough in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.
“The conversation started because I was like, ‘I keep picking up scripts, and I never want to play the girl, I just want to play the guy.’ And I can’t be [the only one],” Robbie stated.
“There are brilliant actresses who aren’t getting amazing roles. And beyond that, you look at the statistics of male versus female directors, male versus female writers, etc., and there’s so much to be done. You can’t just sit there and do nothing when you hear those stats.”
LuckyChap’s first manufacturing was I, Tonya, the offbeat Tonya Harding biopic that gained Allison Janney her first Oscar and Robbie her first nomination.
Since then, Robbie has used LuckyChap to floor tales that centre ladies in entrance of and behind-the-scenes.
Success tales embrace Emerald Fennell’s Oscar-winning debut function Promising Young Woman and her upcoming follow-up Saltburn, in addition to the Margaret Qualley stunner Maid. Through LuckyChap, Robbie was additionally capable of produce her first “solo” outing as DC anti-heroine Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey. The movie turned out to be much less of an arrogance venture for Robbie than an unapologetically femme-forward ensemble piece directed by creative indie director Cathy Yan.
Cut to 2019. Margot Robbie has now connected herself as a producer on Barbie. Her dangerous gambit? Rather than merely push herself ahead because the movie’s star, she bought Warner Bros. on giving the venture to a gutsy feminine auteur with a novel imaginative and prescient for the function. Robbie’s first selection for the gig? Greta Gerwig.
“I think 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,” Robbie recounted in an interview with Collider. “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?!”
Robbie’s pitch prowess was clearly on level as a result of Warner Bros. okayed the plan to enlist Gerwig, whose triumphant adaptation of Little Women was nonetheless in post-production (that movie would go on to attain 6 Oscar nominations, together with Best Picture), as screenwriter and director.
Robbie’s subsequent nice resolution as a producer was to take her ego out of the equation of casting the movie. As she defined in that very same Collider interview, “I didn’t need our director to really feel pressured to place me within the position. So I used to be simply actually upfront about like, ‘I won’t be offended within the slightest. We may go to anybody. Whatever story you need to inform and whoever you need that to be, I help that. I’ve obtained pores and skin within the sport as a producer, I don’t have pores and skin within the sport as an actor, so be free with that selection.’ And [Gerwig] was like, ‘Shut up, I want to write this for you.‘”
Robbie is a unique Hollywood talent in that she possesses the conventional beauty we associate with movie stars, supermodels, and, yes, Barbie dolls, but she attacks projects like a character actor.
Each role she plays has a different accent, a different style, and different physicality. For Barbie, Robbie worked as hard as she had on I, Tonya, doing vigorous research on the role.
As she details for Teen Vogue, transforming into Barbie took significant mental and physical prep before she even hopped into one of Jacqueline Durran’s costumes. The results of this work is the sensible efficiency we obtained to see on display. One that magically embodies an iconic toy and roots the movie’s manic plot in true emotional devastation.
Barbie marked an ideal intersection for Robbie’s skills in entrance of and behind the digital camera, however her work wasn’t performed but. As a producer, it was as soon as extra time for her to promote the image — this time to the general public.
Robbie enlisted the assistance of stylist Andrew Mukamal to recreate well-known Barbie fashions for the assorted crimson carpets she’d should stroll.
Mukamal’s work caught many a style blogger and movie fan’s eye final 12 months when he outfitted Zoë Kravitz in equally on-theme clothes for her flip as Catwoman in The Batman. Armed with many years of Barbie doll outfits and the archives of each main style home, Mukamal turned Robbie’s compulsory promo tour right into a joyous celebration of the venture itself. It was Robbie’s ultimate stroke of genius.
Barbie is presently hurtling in direction of making $US1.2 billion on the international field workplace and should very properly oust The Super Mario Bros. Movie from the highest of the 2023 home field workplace chart later this week. It is an unbelievable success any method you slice it.
While a lot of the reward has been heaped on Greta Gerwig for her wonderful writing and directing and star Ryan Gosling for his scene-stealing “Kenergy,” Robbie is arguably the only individual most liable for Barbie’s success.
She was the one who envisioned Gerwig on the helm and fought for her to be there. She did her darnedest as a producer to take advantage of wonderful film she may — and to make sure folks obtained their butts in seats to see it.
Most of all, just like the movie’s tagline says, she’s Barbie and that makes Margot Robbie every little thing.
This story initially appeared on Decider and was reproduced with permission
Source: www.news.com.au
