Helen Mirren Will Narrate Greta Gerwig's Barbie Movie

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Greta Gerwig's highly anticipated Barbie film is coming this summer. The plot has been really kept under warps, but here's everything we know so far about the film:

What is Barbie about?

No one really knows! "People don't have any idea what to expect, and I think that that's the right vibe," America Ferrera told People about Barbie's plot. "Whatever you think it is, it's not that. It's something else."

Gerwig says it was partly inspired by Reviving Ophelia, a 1994 book about the challenges adolescent grils faces.

Issa Rae, who plays president Barbie, said Greta Gerwig "was explaining the Barbie script to me. She was like, 'I just need to explain what it is.' And I’ll be 100 percent honest, when she was talking, like, it was entertaining, but I didn’t get it. I was like, 'I don’t know what the fuck she was talking about, but whatever it is, I’m excited she’s behind it.' And then reading it was, like, 'Oh my God, I love her even more.'"

America Ferrara, who plays Sasha, says, "There were moments when I didn’t know whether I was laughing or crying. By the time it ended, I was a Barbie girl which is a testament to Miss Gerwig who should be paid all the money for that."

When the film was first announced back in 2018, Deadline reported it was a fish-out-of-water story: "Barbie gets kicked out of Barbieland because she’s not perfect enough, a bit eccentric and doesn’t fit in. She then goes on an adventure in the real world and by the time she returns to Barbieland to save it, she has gained the realization that perfection comes on the inside, not the outside, and that the key to happiness is belief in oneself, free of the obligation to adhere to some unattainable standard of perfection." It's unclear if that is the story that was made, however.

Barbie, however, is definitely the center of the story. "Barbie was invented first," Greta Gerwig told Vogue. "Ken was invented after Barbie, to burnish Barbie’s position in our eyes and in the world. That kind of creation myth is the opposite of the creation myth in Genesis."

The cast is full of stars.

Here's the full cast:

• Margot Robbie as Barbie

• Ryan Gosling as Ken

• Will Ferrell as Mattel CEO

• America Ferrera as Gloria

• Ariana Greenblatt as Sasha

• Emerald Fennell as Midge

• Micahel Cera as Allan

• Jamie Demetriou as a Mattel executive

• Connor Swindells as an intern
  

There will be many Barbies and Kens in the cast:

• Dua Lipa as mermaid Barbie

• Kate McKinnon as gymnast Barbie / weird Barbie

• Alexandra Shipp as writer Barbie
  

• Emma Mackey as physicist Barbie
  

• Ana Cruz Kayne as judge Barbie

• Nichola Coughlan as diplomat Barbie

• Issa Rae as president Barbie

• Ritu Arya as journalist Barbie

• Hari Nef as doctor Barbie

• Sharon Rooney as lawyer Barbie

• Kingsley Ben-Adir as another Ken

• Simu Liu as another Ken
  

• Ncuti Gatwa as another Ken

• Scott Evans as yet another Ken

At a CinemaCon event in April, Gosling talked about channeling his "inner Ken," saying, "I have to be honest, I had up until this point, I only knew Ken from afar. I didn’t know Ken from within. If I’m being really honest, I doubted my Ken-ergy. I didn’t see it. Margot and Greta, I feel like they conjured this out of me somewhere."

Helen Mirren will serve as narrator.

"Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls," Mirren narrated in the teaser trailer (watch above). "But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls. Until ..."

She will also narrate the film.

A soundtrack, Barbie: The Album, features major music stars.

Rolling Stone first reported that the Barbie soundtrack includes Ava Max, Charli XCX, Dominic Fike, Dua Lipa, Fifty Fifty, Gayle, HAIM, Ice Spice, Kali, Karol G, Khalid, Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, PinkPantheress, Ryan Gosling, Tame Impala, and The Kid Laroi. The album will drop the same day as the film.

Barbie will premiere July 21, 2023.

Since it is a Warner Bros film, it will likely stream on HBO Max sometime this fall.

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