Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with Barbie, a cultural phenomenon that became 2023’s highest-grossing film at $1.45 billion worldwide. It’s also got eight Oscar nominations, including for Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s screenplay, which AMPAS put in the Adapted category despite other bodies — including the Writers Guild — clocking it as Original.
Either way, Barbie’s a doll, and the script boasts one of the most talked-about monologues in recent memory, delivered by America Ferrara’s Gloria in the film.
The story centers on Margot Robbie’s “stereotypical” Barbie, whose every day is the best day ever, until a glitch occurs which sends her to the real world (accompanied by Ryan Gosling’s Ken). There, they discover truths they’d never imagined — some hard, some misguided and some very poignant — before heading back to Barbie Land to set things straight.
Robbie has said: “The first time I read the Barbie script, my reaction was, ‘Ah! This is so good. What a shame it will never see the light of day… Because they are never going to let us make this movie.” But Warner Bros and Mattel did let them make it.
At the Gotham Awards in November, Robbie noted: “Four years ago, I asked Greta to come and write Barbie with me.” Gerwig and Baumbach “took an object — a doll with no character or story — and cooked up the most ridiculous, outrageous, bananas script in an attempt to conjure back what they loved about the movies.”
RELATED: ‘Barbie’ Tribute At Gotham Awards: Watch Greta Gerwig & Margot Robbie’s Witty Speech
On the premiere red carpet in July, Gerwig said of Baumbach: “From the first line to the last cut, this movie is his as much as anyone’s. He is a Barbie girl. Nothing in Barbie happened without him, and nothing in Hollywood happens without writers.”
Real-life couple Gerwig and Baumbach previously shared writing duties on 2015’s Mistress America and 2012’s Frances Ha. Gerwig was nominated for an Oscar for her Original Screenplay for 2017’s Lady Bird and for her Adapted Screenplay with 2019’s Little Women. Baumbach has had writing nominations for 2019’s Marriage Story and 2005’s The Squid and the Whale.
Robbie and Tom Ackerley produced Barbie via their LuckyChap Entertainment shingle with Robbie Brenner, head of the Mattel Films division.
Click below to read the script.
Order the complete screenplay of the Barbie movie today, featuring an exclusive introduction by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and eight pages of full-color photos: linktr.ee/barbiethescreenplay