Greta Gerwig may have had a record-breaking year with her box office smash Barbie, but the screenwriter and director has said she is nervous about her next project, a Netflix version of C.S. Lewis's children's classic The Chronicles of Narnia.
I'm slightly terrified because I have such reverence for Narnia," she said on BBC Radio 4's Today program. "I adored Narnia as a child." C.S. Lewis is a thinker and writer as an adult. This is making me nervous. It appears to be something worthy of being frightened of."
As a non-British person, I have a strong desire to do things perfectly... It's almost as if when Americans do Shakespeare, there's a sense of reverence, as if we should take additional care. It is not one of our countrymen."
Gerwig was speaking just three days after Barbie received the inaugural Cinematic and Box Office Achievement award from the Golden Globes for its stellar $1.442 billion global gross in 2023.
It was very wonderful and emotional to be able to take to the stage with the groups that made it," she said of receiving the award.
It felt very fitting... for all of us, the most important thing was to connect with people and have people share an experience in the cinemas, in the movie theaters." Even though this is a new award, it felt like it was meant to highlight that, which is exactly what we wanted to achieve."
On Sunday evening, Golden Globes host Jo Koy was chastised for a statement in which he contrasted Barbie to Oppenheimer, adding that the latter picture "is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies."
Gerwig appeared unaffected when asked about the remark.
Well, he's not entirely wrong. He was spot on because she was the first mass-produced doll with breasts. And, you know, I think a lot of the movie's project was implausible since it's about a plastic doll... Barbie has no character, no story, she's just there to be projected on," she explained.
"While watching her daughter play with baby dolls, [Barbie creator] Ruth Handler realized, 'My daughter doesn't want to pretend to be a mother.'" "She wants to act like a grown woman," she explained.
Barbie has existed since 1959... She's been a villain and a hero, but it felt like it was such a rich place to start, even if it was so seemingly shallow.
