Noah Baumbach reveals his initial thoughts about ‘Barbie’

nme.com:

Barbie was a “terrible idea”.At a special screening at the Writers Guild Of America West headquarters, Baumbach appeared with his wife and Barbie director Greta Gerwig.

Baumbach, who missed the Barbie press tour due to the WGA strike, was able to give his first interview about the $1.4 billion-grossing film, as per Variety.

Despite Barbie’s global success and critical acclaim, Baumbach didn’t always feel hopeful about the prospect of the movie. He confessed to director and Q&A moderator Judd Apatow: “I thought it was a terrible idea and Greta signed me up for it.“I was just like, ‘I don’t see how this is going to be good at all,’” he continued. “I kind of blocked it for a while and every time she’d bring it up, I’d be like, ‘You’ve gotta get us out of this.’”Gerwig went on to explain the reasons her husband was reluctant to be involved, saying: “‘There’s no character and there’s no story, so why do you want to do this?

There’s no entry point.’ And he’d do, like, side calls to try to get us out of it.”However, Baumbach changed his mind when Gerwig present him with a partial script during the pandemic: “It was Barbie waking up in her Dreamhouse and coming out to her backyard and meeting somebody who was sick and dying.“I read these pages and I thought, ‘I understand now what this is,'” he continued.