The Barbie movie Amy Schumer was attached to wasn’t “feminist” or “cool” like Greta Gerwig’s
Amy Schumer was originally attached to star in and co-write Sony's live-action Barbie movie, but says she left over "creative differences"
Aux News Greta Gerwig
Years after Amy Schumer stepped away from an early, Sony iteration of a Barbie live-action movie, the actor and comedian won’t let the behind-the-scenes disagreements that led her to leave stop her from grabbing a ticket for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, due out in July.
“I can’t wait to see the movie, it looks awesome,” Schumer said on a recent episode of “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” adding, “I think we said it was scheduling conflicts, that’s what we said. But yeah, it really was just creative differences.”
Schumer continues, “But you know, there’s a new team behind it, and it looks like it’s very feminist and cool so I will be seeing the movie.”
When Cohen asked Schumer if Schumer’s reasoning behind leaving the film had to do with that iteration not being “feminist and cool,” the Life & Beth creator responded: “Yeah… yeah.”
Schumer was initially attached to the Barbie movie back in 2016. Although the official reasoning for her exodus at the time was a scheduling conflict with I Feel Pretty, Schumer told The Hollywood Reporter in March 2022 that she exited the project after it became clear that Sony “definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it, the only way I was interested in doing it.”
The way Schumer, alongside her sister and writing partner Kim Caramele, wanted to do it quickly proved misaligned with Sony’s vision, as Schumer told THR. The actor recalls taking issue with rewrites that dumbed down the “ambitious inventor” Caramele and Schumer had written Barbie as. There was also the pair of Manolo Blahnik heels she was sent to celebrate closing the film deal.
“The idea that that’s just what every woman must want, right there, I should have gone, ‘You’ve got the wrong gal,’” Schumer explained. Ultimately, she parted ways with the project and later, left her agents at UTA behind, recalling: “I felt like I was disappointing my team by not being Barbie.”
After Barbie, canceled at Sony, moved to Warner Bros. in 2018, lead actor Margot Robbie signed on as a producer and Greta Gerwig took the reins as director. In a recent interview with Vogue, Robbie lauded Gerwig’s script for the highly-anticipated film as “genius.”
Barbie premieres in theaters on July 21, 2023.