Diablo Cody scored one of the biggest cinematic wins of the mid-aughts when 2007’s Juno, the dramedy she wrote and directed about a sarcastic pregnant teenager, skyrocketed out of indie obscurity and earned her an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Years later, her reputation as a witty and winsome feminist scribe secured, Cody was tapped to contribute to the script for a Sony Barbie movie that never made it to theaters. Now, with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie being one of the most anticipated films of 2023, Cody has shed more light on the aborted Sony project, revealing to GQ why she could never make it work.
Cody, who previously told Screen Crush that she so thoroughly failed to build a Barbie movie narrative that she never even submitted a draft, told GQ that the runaway success of 2014’s The Lego Movie made it hard for her to write Barbie meta-commentary because toy satire had already been done so successfully.
“I have made several swings at IP with Barbie and Powerpuff Girls, and I take full responsibility for the failures of those attempts, because I do have a specific voice and POV and I haven’t figured out how to modulate it,” the writer/director continued, referencing the canned Powerpuff Girls live-action series at The CW.
