Margot Robbie has revealed that a producer on Oppenheimer urged her to change the release date of Barbie so the two movies wouldn't be in competition.
The summer of 2023 was an enormous time for cinema as both Oppenheimer and Barbie were released on the same day, 21 July. They were both immense successes critically and commercially, with Barbie earning $1.4 billion at the box office and Oppenheimer making $952m.
A lot of cinema-goers actually did the double feature, which affectionately became known as 'Barbenheimer'.
There was fear in both camps that the competition might not be healthy, though.
"One of your producers, Chuck Roven, called me, because we worked together on some other projects," Robbie told Cillian Murphy as part of Variety's Actors on Actors series.
"And he was like, 'I think you guys should move your date.' And I was like, 'We’re not moving our date. If you’re scared to be up against us, then you move your date.' And he’s like, 'We’re not moving our date. I just think it’d be better for you to move.'
"And I was like, 'We’re not moving!' I think this is a really great pairing, actually. It’s a perfect double billing, Oppenheimer and Barbie."
Murphy replied: "That was a good instinct."
"Clearly the world agreed. Thank God," Robbie continued. "The fact that people were going and being like, 'Oh, watch Oppenheimer' first, then Barbie.' I was like, 'See? People like everything.' People are weird!"
Robbie's Barbie preparation
When Murphy asked Robbie how she prepared for playing such an iconic figure, but not a real person, the actress responded:
"It was so weird prepping Barbie as a character. All my usual tools didn’t apply for this character. I work with an acting coach, and I work with a dialect coach, and I work with a movement coach, and I read everything, and I watch all the things. I rely on animal work a lot. I was maybe 45 minutes into pretending to be a flamingo or whatever, and I was suddenly like, 'It’s not working.'
"I went to Greta, like, 'Help me. I don’t know where to start with this character.' And she’s like, 'OK, what are you scared of?' And I was like, 'I don’t want her to seem dumb and ditzy, but she’s also not meant to know anything. She’s meant to be completely naive and ignorant.' And Greta found this episode on This American Life, where it was a woman who can’t introspect, who doesn’t have the voice in her head that’s constantly narrating life the way we all do. This woman’s got a Ph.D. and is extremely smart, but just doesn’t have that internal monologue."
Related Movie
Oppenheimer
Biography / Drama
2023 • 180 minutes
Comments (0)