Margot Robbie is just a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world. Warner Bros. Pictures finally released the official teaser trailer for the highly-anticipated Greta Gerwig film, Barbie on Friday, featuring Robbie as the beloved eponymous doll.
The clip begins by showing sad-looking little girls on an island caring for their baby dolls as Richard Strauss’ triumphant orchestral epic “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (known as the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme song) plays. A narrator dramatically reads, “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls, until…”
Robbie appears styled the way the first Mattel Barbie doll was in 1959. Clad in the very same white and black striped strapless one-piece bathing suit and peep-toe heels as the original model, Robbie pulled down her white-framed cat-eye shades to give the little girls a smile and a wink. The girls begin to destroy and toss out their old baby dolls as the teaser cuts to an ultra-glamorous, pink-washed world.
The actress previously told British Vogue that playing such an iconic figure, “comes with a lot of baggage” and “nostalgic connections.” However, she added, “with that come[s] a lot of exciting ways to attack it. People generally hear ‘Barbie’ and think, ‘I know what that movie is going to be,’ and then they hear that Greta Gerwig is writing and directing it, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I don’t…’”
The script was co-written by Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach. Ryan Gosling will star as Barbie’s longtime boyfriend, Ken, while Academy Award-winner Emerald Fennell, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, Hari Nef, Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Alexandra Shipp and Robbie-lookalike, Death on the Nile’s Emma Mackey are also set to appear in the LuckyChap Entertainment production.
Gerwig opened up about the film on Dua Lipa’s “At Your Service” podcast, expressing both excitement and terror about the project. “It was terrifying,” said Gerwig. “There’s something about starting from that place where it’s like, ‘well, anything is possible.’ It felt like vertigo starting to write. Like, where do you even begin? What would be the story?’” She added, “That feeling that I had was knowing that it would be really interesting terror. Usually that’s where the best stuff is. I am terrified of that. Anything where you’re like, ‘This could be a career-ender,’ then you’re like, ‘OK, I probably should do it.’”
Barbie is set to hit theaters on July 21, 2023.
