As you know, Barbie made more than $1 billion worldwide, propelling Greta Gerwig to become the highest grossing female director of all time and making it the highest grossing Warner Bros film of all time. Since we’re living in the Franchise Era, there’s naturally been speculation about whether or not Barbie will get a sequel. Last month, Margot Robbie shut those rumors down, saying that they’d put everything into the movie and that it was intended to be a standalone story. It was nice to hear a creator putting the art over profit for once.

Well, naturally, talk about continuing Barbie’s world didn’t stop with questions about a Barbie sequel. This week, 60 Minutes profiled Gerwig and asked her about the movie, which she and partner Noah Baumbach co-wrote during the Covid lockdowns. When correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi asked them about the possibility of a Ken-centric movie, Gerwig played coy.

In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, Baumbach and Gerwig spoke about their work on “Barbie,” their approach to screenwriting, and why their partnership works. And Alfonsi tried to learn what she could about a “Barbie” sequel.

Baumbach and Gerwig said that when writing the “Barbie” script, they always had Ryan Gosling in mind to play Ken, even writing his full name next to Ken’s lines in the first draft.

When writing for the role of Ken, Baumbach and Gerwig came up with a wealth of ideas they couldn’t fit into their final draft. In an earlier version of the script, they further explored the “Ken effect” in the real world and wrote a scene for the movie in which Ryan Gosling plays himself.

“We had way too much material for Ken. We would write, and write, and write,” Gerwig explained. Baumbach interrupted and told Gerwig not to “give it away.”

Alfonsi asked, “Would there ever be a Ken Movie?” Gerwig laughed and said she couldn’t comment on that, but she didn’t rule it out completely.

“I mean, the truth is, you know…I guess we’ll see,” she said with a smile.

[From CBS]

Look, I loved Ryan Gosling as Ken. I thought he was perfect, no notes. The behind-the-scenes footage from “I’m Just Ken” is delightful. But…do we need a Ken movie? What made Barbie so special was that it was about *Barbie,* a doll that millions of (primarily) little girls played with and created worlds around. It spoke to and about our feelings of existentialism and experiences in a largely patriarchal society. We loved Ken because he was goofy and trying to find his own worth within the world he lived in. He works in that capacity. We don’t need to redirect the franchise to be about a man. Yes, I know they could do something expanding on Ken’s learning to navigate in a society where he’s “Just Ken” and explore more in depth the topic of toxic masculinity, but they covered that pretty well within Barbie itself. If they want to show us more of Ken’s story that they couldn’t fit into the first edit, release a director’s cut or include them in the DVD extras. Let Barbie be Kenough.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by BARBIE (@barbiethemovie)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by BARBIE (@barbiethemovie)

photos credit: Backgrid, Avalon.red and via Instagram and YouTube