Netflix and Shondaland have snapped up worldwide rights to Black Barbie: A Documentary, a brand new movie from Lagueria Davis that first screened to vital acclaim as a work-in-progress at this yr’s SXSW Movie Pageant.
Pic is exec produced by Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers as a part of their general take care of Netflix, which was prolonged in 2021, following the Bridgerton duo’s preliminary signing with the streamer in 2017. It arrives at a time when the doll made world well-known by Mattel has taken on a brand new stage of cultural cachet, because of Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy Barbie, which has grossed over $1.43B worldwide since its July twenty first launch by Warner Bros, coming in because the highest-grossing movie of 2023, in addition to the highest grosser within the historical past of the studio, and for a solo feminine director.
Whereas resonating with the themes of that movie written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Black Barbie appears to be like at each the corporate and its product from a distinct vantage level, celebrating the momentous impression three Black girls at Mattel had on the evolution of the Barbie model as we all know it. By way of these charismatic insiders’ tales, the documentary tells the story of how the primary Black Barbie got here to be in 1980, analyzing the significance of illustration and the way dolls will be essential to the formation of identification and creativeness.
Producers on the pic included Aaliyah Williams for Simply A Insurgent and Davis for Beautiful Day Movies. Along with Rhimes and Beers for Shondaland, govt producers included Grace Lay and Sumalee Montano for LinLay Productions, Camilla Corridor for Girl & Chicken Movies, Milan Chakraborty, and Jyoti Sarda.
In a press release launched on Tuesday, Davis mentioned that “Telling Black Barbie’s story has been such a private journey and it warms my coronary heart to have a good time the legacy of my aunt Beulah Mae Mitchell, Kitty Black Perkins, and Stacey McBride Irby in our movie. We couldn’t have requested for higher collaborators than Shondaland and Netflix to carry this story to the world.”
Producing a few of Netflix’s hottest collection beneath its pact with the service, together with the Anna Delvey drama Inventing Anna, Regency period romantic fantasy Bridgerton, and the latter’s prequel spin-off Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, Shondaland most lately rounded out the ensemble for its Netflix homicide thriller, The Residence. The eight-episode collection billed as a “screwball whodunnit” takes inspiration kind the Kate Andersen Brower e-book The Residence: Contained in the Non-public World of the White Home, and launched its casting course of previous to the beginning of the strikes.
