Margot Robbie’s ‘Barbie’ May Have Found Her Ken in Form of Another Oscar-Nominee

Ryan Gosling will play Ken to Margot Robbie’s Barbie in an upcoming movie centered on the classic Mattel doll line. Little Women filmmaker Greta Gerwig will direct the project, which Robbie is co-producing under her LuckyChap entertainment productions. The movie will be written by Gerwig and filmmaker Noah Baumbach.

Sources told Deadline Friday Gosling is still in talks with Warner Bros. to join the project. The actor was previously approached to play Ken, but pre-production Barbie went on longer than expected and Warner Bros. insisted Gosling was the best actor for the part. Thankfully, he found an opening in his packed schedule and he could finally start serious negotiations. With him now involved, Barbie is inching closer to a green light, and production could start early next year.

The plot is still under wraps. Robbie is producing with her LuckyChap partner Tom Acherkly, Mattel’s Robbie Brenner, and David Heyman. Executive producers include Josey McNamara of LuckyChap and Ynon Kreiz of Mattel.

Barbie has been a surprising passion project for Robbie for years. In a December 2020 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Robbie said her plan for the film is to take in a totally unexpected direction. “Something like Barbie where the IP, the name itself, people immediately have an idea of, ‘Oh, Margot is playing Barbie, I know what that is,’ but our goal is to be like, ‘Whatever you’re thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different – the thing you didn’t know you wanted,’” she said.

Robbie hopes the new film can “honor” the property, while also surprising fans. “Because if we can do all that and provoke a thoughtful conversation, then we’re really firing on all cylinders,” she told THR. Robbie also understands that the Barbie property comes with “a lot of baggage,” as she told Vogue over the summer, due to the numerous controversies Barbie has faced since the brand was introduced in 1959.

Robbie is an Oscar nominee for her roles in I, Tonya, and Bombshell, and stars as Harley Quinn in the DC Comics movies for Warner Bros. LuckyChap also produced I, Tonya, and Birds of Prey. The company had a big hit with Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for Best Picture.

As for Gosling, he has Oscar nominations for Half Nelson and La La Land. He recently finished filming the action thriller The Gray Man with Chris Evans and Ana de Armas. He is also set to star in The Actor and a new Wolfman movie from Jason Blum’s Blumhouse and Universal.