The biggest money-gobbling motion picture last year was, of course, Barbie, Hollywood’s first big film about the decades-old doll line. What took the studio honchos so long? Did they not know moviegoers where hungry to watch a sentient toy take on the patriarchy while her sorta-boyfriend does a song-and-dance? Apparently they weren’t, as Sharon Stone recently recalled getting a hard no when she pitched her own Barbie movie some three decades ago.
Per People, the actress posted a comment on an Instagram post by Barbie actress America Ferrera, which included video of her accepting the SeeHer Award at Sunday’s Critics’ Choice Awards.
“I was laughed out if the studio when i came w the Barbie idea in the 90s w the support of the head of Barbie,” Stone wrote. “How far we’ve come thank you ladies for your courage and endurance.”
Stone didn’t go into detail, but given her bit about “how far we’ve come,” it sounds like execs weren’t so into the idea of a female-driven blockbuster. The ‘90s weren’t a great time for that type of movie, as witness the hostility that greeted Geena Davis when she starred in the female-driven pirate movie Cutthroat Island. After that film became one of the biggest bombs in movie history, the studios were especially wary of expensive movies about women.
In her Critics’ Choice Awards speech, Ferrera thanked Barbie director/cowriter Greta Gerwig for “proving through your incredible mastery as a filmmaker that women’s stories have no difficulty achieving cinematic greatness and box-office history at the same time.” Ferrera said she also showed that “unabashedly telling female stories does not diminish your powers, it expands them.”
(Via People)
