Not content with having gone through more jobs, outfits and houses than any normal person (only one serious boyfriend, though), as well as starring in a series of animated adventures, Mattel’s **Barbie **has her sights set on movie stardom. Sony has put together a fast-track deal that could see production starting on a Barbie movie before the year breathes its last.
Clearly hoping for a franchise to rival other toy-based megaliths like Transformers, Sony jumped at the chance to secure the rights after Mattel decided to finally open up a pitch process for a variety of producers, which led to a deal with Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald. They brought in writer Jenny Bicks to cook up a contemporary tale that casts the title character as a sort of modern day Mary Poppins, who swoops into peoples’ lives and uses her personal and professional skills to make them better.
The hope is to find a young cast to play Barbie, Ken and others and find bigger names to surround them - but where will they find a real-life Barbie with those proportions?
With He-Man from the new version of Masters Of The Universe still making his way slowly through development, all involved want **Barbie **to hit screens at lot more swiftly. It’s here we’d make some joke about “if Barbie can get a movie gig, what’s to stop this stress ball we just found on our desk making a 17-picture deal at Universal?” but with the recent announcements about It’s A Small World and Peeps, nothing is safe to crack wise about. Nothing.