Barbie 2? ‘We’d love to,’ says Warner Bros boss

The film took $1. 4bn (£1. 1bn) at the box office globally, making it the most successful movie of 2023. Warner Bros boss Pam Abdy said both parties were always talking about a follow-up.

Gerwig said she is open to the idea if she can find an undertow for the film. The Academy has worked to diversify its 10,000-strong membership in recent years. But it’s still a predominantly white, male organisation. Abdy and I were talking at the Warner Bros.

backlot in Burbank, Los Angeles. 110 acres of sound stages, painted facades and recognisable streets. Christopher Nolan spent most of his career with Warner Bros. But in 2020 Nolan walked away, furious about the company’s decision to put a year’s worth of new movies onto its streaming platform.

Nolan then made his Bafta-winning and heavily tipped Oscar favourite about the theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer. Pam Abdy began her career at Jersey Films, the company behind Pulp Fiction. The director and actor picked her, she thinks, because he liked her strong New Jersey accent. Abdy rose to become president and has since worked in many top roles including at Paramount Pictures.

Warner Bros hasn’t won a best picture Oscar since Argo in 2013. The company is part of Warner Bros Discovery, owner of CNN, the Discovery channel and HBO. The TV side of the business has been struggling with a sharp decline in advertising revenue. Abdy wouldn’t tell me what Cruise is making for her with director Alejandro González Iñárritu.

But she said it “deserves to be seen on the biggest screens possible all around the world. She seems to be signalling that the studio has listened to Nolan. Abdy has a good track record, including overseeing Oscar-winning films The Revenant, The Big Short and Birdman. But according to a new UCLA Hollywood diversity report, only three female directors were at the helm of movies with budgets of $100m (£78m) or more.

Abdy calls the slow progress for women in film “frustrating. She and De Luca are riding high on the commercial success of Barbie. They have locked Margot Robbie and her production company LuckyChap in for future movies. Abdy: “We feel like their collision of art and commerce is just magical” Abdy optimistically says there’s always a chance that Barbie could win best picture.

She believes the film industry had previously fallen into a rut - “everything had to be a superhero movie”” - but says that isn#38;t what people actually want.

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