After the triumph of Greta Gerwig’s billion-dollar Barbie film, Mattel lately revealed that its annual “Career of the Year” Barbie assortment would showcase Girls in Movie. 4 dolls had been introduced — studio government, director, cinematographer and film star — main some on social media web site X and varied different cursed corners of the Web to level out the important leisure jobs that had been missed.
“Where is Screenwriter Barbie?” posted Taffy Brodesser-Akner, the Emmy nominated author behind Fleishman Is in Bother. “Does Mattel not know how to make sweatpants? Does Mattel not know how to get avocado toast on a t-shirt and just kind of leave it there?”
The Wire creator David Simon wrote: “No key set PA Barbie who has to go into Movie Star Barbie’s trailer and tell the delicate flower to get the fuck down to set because 120 other pissed-off Barbie’s are waiting for her. That film taught Mattel nothing.”
And the place the heck is the Academy Barbie to miss the contributions of the Barbies behind Barbie?!
Whereas it might be too late, The Hollywood Reporter has pitches for Mattel for brand new Girls in Movie Barbies, full with extra reasonable equipment and designs that THR commissioned from The Sporting Press.
Assistant Barbie
Illustration by The Sporting Press
Assistant Barbie comes with a can-do perspective however a Gen Z insistence on work-life steadiness that makes her bosses really feel deeply uncomfortable and really previous. However there are nonetheless all the trimmings of the basic Assistant Dream Workplace™ expertise: A number of telephones, crying in the lavatory, dad and mom and guardians that query post-grad decisions. And when issues get determined, when the folks on the prime aren’t retiring, when morale is low however the pay is even decrease, when she reads about yet one more re-org at her firm in the trades, she simply reminds herself: There’s all the time legislation college!
VFX Barbie
Illustration by The Sporting Press
VFX Barbie has been pulling 80-hour work weeks so the studios can nonetheless make their launch calendars after Hollywood’s twin strikes. Talking of unions, she would love get in on the motion, if solely her agency would keep in enterprise for lengthy sufficient to unionize. Within the meantime, her administrators will ignore her very existence. Except, in fact, critics level out that the VFX in their movies was not effectively performed, in which case they may throw her work beneath the bus.
Indie Producer Barbie
Illustration by The Sporting Press
Indie Producer Barbie is holding it collectively because of a well-honed mixture of Xanax, delusion and good insoles. She comes full with an auteur director, a disgruntled line producer and a community TV star who needs an awards play however solely may give them six shoot days. Good factor that the years of onerous work scrapping collectively financing and the mountains of private debt hinge on social media posts from individuals who could or is probably not on the Sundance screening.
Beneath the Line Barbie
Illustration by The Sporting Press
Beneath-the-line Barbie comes with equipment (and unions) for 40 completely different positions. She additionally comes with months of back-to-back productions that she feels she will be able to by no means say no to, so the playtime by no means ends! She is the lifeblood of Hollywood and so they can’t do something with out her. When she is sick, producers even have her discover her personal substitute for the day. She will actually do all of it!
AI Barbie
Illustration by The Sporting Press
In a Malibu dream home someplace between Topanga Canyon and the Uncanny Valley, lives AI Barbie, mendacity in await simply the proper contractual loophole. Does she kinda appear like Margot Robbie? Does she kinda appear like Jennifer Lawrence? Does she kinda look like a waking nightmare? Sure! And he or she has nearly the proper variety of fingers, too. After bringing the business to its knees for six months, she was put again into her field. However as that one studio exec instructed her “It’s only a soft no.” There’s no rush as a result of she is all the time tech avail!
This story first appeared in the Jan. 18 difficulty of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.
