Gosh, here comes Judd Apatow, disagreeing with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ decision to classify Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” as an adapted screenplay rather than original.
“It’s insulting to the writers to say they were working off of existing material,” the “Knocked Up” and “This Is 40” director wrote on X/Twitter on Saturday. “There was no existing material or story. There was a clear box.”
This was never going to be original. “Barbie” is an established IP. Apatow needs to chill out, as usual. Remember, this is the same guy who tweeted that Will Smith could have killed Chris Rock during #SlapGate at the Oscars.
Regardless, the film’s classification by the AMPAS has sparked spirited debate throughout the film industry. The way I see it is that the Writers Branch of the AMPAS didn’t have much of a choice to move “Barbie” to adapted screenplay because Barbie and Ken are pre-existing dolls from Mattel.
Does a movie based on a doll actually mean it was adapted from source material? There’s technically no story being adapted here — writers Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig invented the plot from scratch. The only thing adapted were the dolls, which are Mattel property.
Many have pointed out the example of “Toy Story” — which received a Best Original Screenplay nomination in 1996 despite the existence of toys like Mr. Potato Head and Slinky. However, If we just go by history, many films with pre-existing characters have been classified in Oscar history as adapted screenplays — they include “Toy Story 3,” “Borat 2,” and “Before Sunset.”
Last August, when Warner Bros came to the decision to campaign “Barbie” as an Original Screenplay, I was quite surprised. I instantly saw it as a strategic move from Warners — “Barbie” just has a much better shot at winning in Original than it would have in the stacked Adapted category.
Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America has designated “Barbie” an original work, and it will compete in that category for the WGA Awards.