Sydney Sweeney is on a roll. Hot off the heels of her double nomination at her first Emmy Awards, and being honored on the TIME100 Next list, the Euphoria actress just added another film to her busy schedule.
Deadline reported that Sweeney will star in and executive produce the new Barbarella movie for Sony Pictures. The studio hasn’t named a director or writer yet, but the film is based on Jean-Claude Forest’s French comic book series on a space-age vixen that was later turned into the 1968 movie starring Jane Fonda.
Sweeney confirmed the news on Instagram, sharing an illustration of Jane Fonda in the role and a screenshot of the Deadline article. She captioned the post, “time to save the universe.” It only makes sense, given her meteoric rise, that Sweeney is now heading for the stars!
The same day the news was announced, Sweeney was spotted in the middle of filming another Sony Pictures project, Madame Web alongside Dakota Johnson. The busy actress also has another film in the works — Tony Tost’s National Anthem, where she is set to star alongside Halsey and her Euphoria co-star Eric Dane.
In 2018, Fonda opened up in her HBO documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, about taking on the role in Barbarella, which has gone down as one of her most iconic through the years. In the doc, the actress recalled producer Dino De Laurentiis reaching out with the comic strip proposing she take on the role. “I knew that Bardot had turned it down, Sophia Loren had turned it down, and I didn’t want to do it,” Fonda said. As a big science fan, her then-husband Roger Vadim signed on to direct the film and urged Fonda to sign on to the project.
Vadim was a French screenwriter (also known for his steamy affairs with Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve). As bona fide Hollywood royalty, Fonda was known at the time as a reserved young starlet, and daughter of Grapes of Wrath actor Henry Fonda. Her portrayal as the intergalactic sexpot catapulted Fonda from the “girl next door” to a science fiction bombshell of immeasurable recognition.
“When I look at the movie now, I thoroughly enjoy it. I mean, I think it’s just a camp romp, really,” Fonda said in her HBO doc. “I don’t think it’s particularly sexy.”
We can’t wait to see how Sweeney takes on the iconic role.
