Diablo Cody Revisits Her Scrapped 'Barbie' Movie, What Went Wrong & The Movie That Became a 'Roadblock'

We’re weeks away from Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie hitting theaters, but fans of the iconic doll almost got a very different take on the story from Diablo Cody.

Years before Greta signed on, the Juno director was brought on by Sony to work on a film inspired by the toy. Two actresses were attached to the project in the titular role before it was ultimately scrapped.

With the impending release of Barbie, Diablo is looking back on her take on the character that will never see the light of day. In the process, she revealed a movie that became a major roadblock for her creative process and explained some of her other creative problems.

Read more about Diablo Cody’s Barbie movie…

Diablo previously said that she “failed so hard” at getting Barbie to the finish line, but not for a lack of effort. Now, she has some additional insight.

“I think I know why I s-it the bed,” she told GQ, listing a couple of problems.

First up was that the timing wasn’t right: “When I was first hired for this, I don’t think the culture had not embraced the femme or the bimbo as valid feminist archetypes yet. If you look up ‘Barbie’ on TikTok you’ll find this wonderful subculture that celebrates the feminine, but in 2014, taking this skinny blonde white doll and making her into a heroine was a tall order.”

The idea then was to create an “anti-Barbie,” but that wound up being limiting. “I didn’t really have the freedom then to write something that was faithful to the iconography; they wanted a girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie, and I couldn’t figure it out because that’s not what Barbie is.”

Furthermore, Diablo explained that The Lego Movie‘s breakout success created so many unexpected problems for her.

“I heard endless references to The Lego Movie in development, and it created a problem for me because they had done it so well,” she explained. “Any time I came up with something meta, it was too much like what they had done.”

Greta‘s Barbie premieres on July 21 and has already been banned in one country.