Greta Gerwig‘s currently filming Barbie, based on a script by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, is almost certainly not going to be a John Waters film. There would be nowhere to go if she did that. Gerwig is too crafty and edgy and invested in #MeToo consciousness to make a simple-minded, empty-headed flick about Barbie and Ken wallowing in Nothingville.

As far as I can determine there’s only one way for Gerwig to go story-wise, and that’s to make a Barbie variation of The Truman Show. Put another way, Gerwig and Baumbach’s film will most likely be Barbie and Ken Become Woke.

Margot Robbie is Barbie; Ryan Gosling is Ken.

It goes without saying that in Act One Ken will leave Barbie because he’s gay. (Ken has been totally gay since the ’60s.) Barbie herself could decide to go lezzy. Or it could be a 1950s period thing in which Ken and Barbie get married and buy a Southern California tract home and become one of those miserable couples in Martin Ritt‘s No Down Payment (’57). Or it could be set in the ’60s with Barbie becoming a member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Excerpt from Margot Robbie 2021 interview: “Barbie comes with a lot of baggage, and a lot of nostalgic connections. But with that comes a lot of exciting ways to attack it. People generally hear ‘Barbie’ and think, ‘I know what that movie is going to be,’ and then they hear that Greta Gerwig is writing and directing it, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I don’t.’”

Warner Bros. will release Barbie on 7.21.23.