'Barbie' movie shares new footage of Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling's dolls in the real world
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LAS VEGAS – Before she arrives in theaters this summer, Barbie painted Sin City pink.
"Barbie" star Margot Robbie brought her much-anticipated comedy to CinemaCon and wowed the convention for theater owners and studios with a new look at Robbie's fantastic plastic doll and Ryan Gosling's Ken.
The fresh footage shown from director Greta Gerwig's meta comedy (in theaters July 21) fleshes out the plot, where Barbie is cool hanging out and having dance parties at her house. However, a series of strange circumstances in their plastic landscape lead Barbie and Ken on a series of misadventures in the real world, getting arrested multiple times, singing the Indigo Girls' "Closer to Fine" and even seeing merman John Cena.
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Making “Barbie” as a producer and star “was just such a huge and exciting opportunity – and a rare one,” said Robbie, who like Gosling was clad in pink on the CinemaCon stage. “Everyone knows Barbie and she’s never been on the big screen before.”
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Gosling got real about playing Ken. “Well, I have to be honest: I only knew Ken from afar before now. I didn’t know Ken from within. I doubted my Kenergy," he said. “I didn’t see it but Margot and Greta conjured this out of me somehow. One day I was bleaching my hair, shaving my legs and wearing bespoke pink outfits and rollerblading down Venice Beach.”
Gerwig reported that Technicolor musicals were a big influence for her and the production was so colorful that people from other movies filming nearby wanted to see what was up, Robbie said. "It was like a dopamine hit every time you talked into the 'Barbie' set.”
Added Gosling: "I can’t believe I'm saying this, but I think I finally know what Dorothy felt like."
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Oprah Winfrey debuts first footage from musical ‘The Color Purple’
Also at the Warner Bros. presentation, producer Oprah Winfrey and director Blitz Bazawule were on hand to introduce the first trailer from “The Color Purple” (in theaters Dec. 25), a musical adaptation of the Alice Walker novel. Winfrey's role in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 movie was her first film role and “the biggest and most important thing that had ever happened to me and still is. It holds great personal meaning.”
The first footage more closely resembles the Broadway show than the previous film, with music and magical realism. Two of the film’s stars, Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks, were in the Broadway version for a year in 2015 and reprise their roles. Taraji P. Henson plays the third main sister.
On stage with Winfrey and her co-stars, Henson recalled being approached to audition for the Broadway “Color Purple” “but I punked out. This was the perfect way to do it. One and done. It was something my voice could handle.”
“American Idol” winner Barrino noted that her life has changed since she first played Celie, “which was the hardest time of my life because my life was so much like Celie’s at the time. So I had to pull up some things that I had buried, walked away from, but I felt safe … and I was able to go back to that place.”
Everything you should know about 'Barbie':
- How old is Barbie? Ahead of the 'Barbie' movie release, here's a look at the doll's storied history
- 'Welcome to Barbie Land':Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling bring Barbie and Ken to life in 'Barbie' trailer
- New Barbie: Mattel releases doll with Down syndrome in new lineup of inclusive figures
- HGTV to turn Barbie's Dreamhouse into a real home: New series hosted by Ashley Graham
- 'SNL' spoofs 'Barbie' trailer: See the clever American Girl doll parody