Randall Park cautions Hollywood is taking the 'wrong lessons' from Barbie 's success
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Barbie's blockbuster success does not mean Hollywood should tap into more toy IP, according to Randall Park.
Greta Gerwig's musical comedy has surpassed $1 billion at the box office and shattered records, but Park is concerned that the "industry is taking the wrong lessons" from it. "Barbie is this massive blockbuster, and the idea is: Make more movies about toys! No," he said in a recent Rolling Stone interview. "Make more movies by and about women!"
Amid the film's success, Mattel executives are already plotting next moves, alluding to the possibility of a sequel while continuing to develop other properties for the big screen, including Polly Pocket, Hot Wheels, and American Girl. "Barbie, as a brand, has many different iterations," Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz told Variety last month. "In addition to the main Barbie figure, she has family, she has a lot of elements around in her universe. It's a very rich universe… It's a very broad and very elastic brand, in terms of opportunities."
Roy Rochlin/Getty; Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures Randall Park; Margot Robbie as Barbie
"At the outset, we're not saying, 'Okay, let's think already about movie two and three,'" Kreiz conceded. "Let's get the first one right and make that a success. And if you do that, opportunities open up very quickly, once you establish the first movie as a successful representation of a franchise on the big screen. Successful movies lend themselves to more movies. Our ambition is to create film franchises."
As for Park, the actor is currently promoting his directorial feature debut Shortcomings (in theaters now), based on Adrian Tomine's graphic novel of the same name. When asked about how it felt to be "counterprogramming" to the blockbuster behemoths of Barbie and Oppenheimer, Park quipped, "Hey, man. I see it as Barbenheimercomings. The three of us together have broken records!"
He added, "Ah, no. I can't control any of that stuff, so it doesn't affect me too much. I am genuinely happy that we got acquired by a great company like Sony Pictures Classics and are out into the world. It's such a challenging time for our movie on numerous levels, but I do feel confident that we'll find our audience eventually. When we got into Sundance, I said, 'Whatever happens from here on out is extra.'"
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