Lena Dunham to direct Polly Pocket movie starring Lily Collins
It's literally going to be about a girl who befriends a pocket-sized woman
Film News Lena Dunham
For years, Hasbro’s approach to turning a toy into a movie was to make it dumb and have a lot of explosions. It worked with the Transformers movies (at least in terms of making money), but it was less effective in the Battleship and G.I. Joe movies. Mattel, which has yet to really launch as many movies based on toys as Hasbro has, is taking a different tactic for its fledgling movie branch: It’s giving toy brands over to famous people in hopes that they’ll make something that actually good instead of just “has explosions.” Rapper Lil Yachty is making some kind of UNO heist movie, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are apparently working on a Barbie movie that we will believe when we see, and a few months ago we learned that Vin Diesel was attached to a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots movie.
Today, Mattel attached two famous people to a toy movie that is somehow even weirder than those three, with Lena Dunham writing and directing a Polly Pocket movie that will star Lily Collins as the title character. The original toy line involved a very small plastic girl who lived in a clamshell playset. Basically, it was like having a Barbie house that you could take on a car ride, which doesn’t seem like it should lend itself directly to a movie, but we’ve seen enough of these toy movies to know that’s not true. In fact, Dunham’s plan sounds pretty straightforward (via Deadline), with her movie about about “a young girl and a pocket-sized woman who form a friendship.” So it’s like if the Transformers movies were about a guy who has a toy car that turns into a robot, except the robot is alive—just a straight line from “what the toy is” to “what the movie is.” Dunham also teases that the movie will be “smart” and “playful” without “condescension,” so she definitely has some kind of take on the property.
45 Comments
Didn’t she lie about having evidence that discredited a rape accuser?
She stupidly defended her friend from a rape accusation and then apologized. She kind of sucks but hasn’t done anything worthy of such a dramatic tweet. People just think she’s obnoxious and men don’t like her.
goddammit I was driving home not a half hour ago wondering whatever happened to Lena Dunham and thinking about how nice it was not to hear about her anymore
Holly Hobby or GTFO!
I think “Rapper Lil Yachty” demonstrates that ALL the good Rap names have been taken.
Man, forget Polly Pocket. Give us a Mighty Max movie so we can finally get the kickass cartoon series in modern times! Seriously, outside of a half-dozen or so episodes on VHS, this glorious cartoon has never been re-released. No DVD, no Blu-ray, no iTunes, no Netflix, nothing. Sure, there is a fan-made restoration project, but they can only do so much.
Companies like Shout Factory actually HAVE tried to license the show for DVD release, but Film Roman/Bluebird Toys refuses to allow it because they don’t have any more Mighty Max toys to sale.
I thought Mattel bought out Bluebird Toys and now own the rights to Mighty Max. Wasn’t Polly Pocket also originally a Bluebird product?
Apparently they did merge with Mattel. Mattel wasn’t listed on Mighty Max’s Wikipedia page, so I glossed over that.
Either way, same difference. The people in charge of the brand aren’t making new toys, which means no DVD/Digital release.
What is this, a contest to write the most insufferable sentence ever?
– the AV Club
I mean in a way it kind of makes sense that she’d take a job making toys talk. After all her father is one of the most famous ventriloquists in the world.
People didn’t like Girls? I thought it was great. Oh, well.
People didn’t like Girls?
Welcome to the internet! I take it this is your first day?
Thanks Bo
I believe it’s more about disliking Dunham herself more than Girls specifically.
She was the first person on the planet to use the Canon 5D Mk II as a film camera, at least according to Lena Dunham.
Which planet?
Oh, that series about hipster upper class white women with their oh so brave daily struggle of coping the first world problem? Masterminded by an insufferable upper class white “woke feminist” woman? What’s not to like?
People liked Girls? I never saw it.
It has some very good episodes.
I guess I’m the only one here who remembers Precious Places Village?
looks like it
Sigh, what a world.
Lena Dunham is one of those folk I just don’t understand. I watched her “breakout” movie, a couple episodes of her show, and just…meh. And that’s what she is: Meh. I get it if you like her work. Good for you. But it’s meh.
She’s a rich, white girl from New York’s upper strata. Pretty much everyone is obligated to crawl up her arse.
I was wondering how I got here.
You’re a spider. I only assume you crawl anywhere is to lay your eggs.
I live in upstate NY (think Lake Placid area) and it’s really funny how there is nothing but poverty or rich. I lived on L.I. for a few years and the disparity was even evident there. Folk that say there’s no class structure in the US are just spewing shit out their mouth. I saw it every day walking from Penn Station to the Javits back in 2017.
I watched like 2 1/2 episodes of Girls and my entire review boils down to “way less funny Broad City.”
Glass half full: Mattel are hiring interesting people to make their movies in 2021Glass half empty: In 2021 interesting people have to be hired by Mattel to make movies
Only fair they do mighty max next.
We are really scraping the bottom of the IP barrel.
I’m waiting for a crossover with Pocket-Size Rudy.
The pocket sized girl is often going to be naked and won’t be conventionally attractive, right?
Hey – once in a while it’s nice to have a movie based on children’s culture that doesn’t involve explosions and mayhem.
It’s always a colorful explosion of bile whenever Lena Dunham is mentioned. Like…people REALLY don’t like her. That’s fine, other than when it’s clearly a misogynist on the coattails of people who find her irritating for other reasons, and I have met people who have known her who didn’t like her either. But, like another white woman who makes people but particularly men really angry, and who also has problematic things in her past, it always reminds me of when people come for Amy Schumer over and over, because they disregard that Dunham is a really good writer. Particularly the first season of Girls, so who knows if she still got it, and it wasn’t a brilliant as “Twelve Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer” but whether you disliked the subject matter or the painful whiteness, it was very well written.I’d just ask people who are saying normal things on here like “why does this person get to do this for a living?” to look at their comment bedfellows to make sure they aren’t saying things like “And I hope her fibroids explode!” because that level of anger means there’s something else going on.
“Dunham is a really good writer”I watched a couple episodes of the first season, it was boring as hell.
I mean, not to belabor the point but was it about you? Like, not everything is for and about everybody, nor does it have to be, but a really disproportionate number of white men (not presuming you are either) get very umptious that a show called “Girls” wasn’t about them.
No, of course not. No TV shows are about me.I am a white man but I’m not being ‘umptious’(unctuous? Still doesn’t really fit but it’s a word) about anything, just taking issue with the assertion that she’s a good writer.
I like umptious, but can’t find it as an official word, so let’s go with “umbrageous”
Urban Dictionary tells me it’s slang for ‘scrumptious’ and I don’t think that’s what you were shooting for.
I like ‘umbrageous’ and I do believe I’m going to have to fit that into my vocabulary going forward. Anyhow, I’m not really angry, I just don’t think she’s a good writer. Rather subjective opinion, sure, but one I know I’m not alone in holding.
Bumptious? Also not quite. I like umbrageous, but I wonder if to today’s kids that will just mean that the men look like Imelda Staunton.
I can’t live in a world in which Polly Pocket is getting a major theatrical release and the director swears it’ll be smart.