Ryan Gosling in negotiations to play Ken in Margot Robbie-led Barbie movie

Hollywood star Ryan Gosling is in final talks to feature as Ken opposite Margot Robbie’s Barbie in the movie based on the world-famous Mattel doll. According to Variety, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Greta Gerwig is directing the Warner Bros movie from a script she co-wrote with her filmmaker partner Noah Baumbach.

In addition to starring, Margot is producing the movie under her LuckyChap Entertainment banner along with Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara.

Mattel’s Robbie Brenner and David Heyman are also on board as producers. LuckyChap’s Josey McNamara and Mattel’s Ynon Kreiz are executive producers.

Plot details of the film are currently under wraps, but makers are planning to start the principal photography early next year and are eyeing a 2023 release for the movie.

Margot was recently seen in James Gunn’s Suicide Squad. In a recent interview, she spoke about how performing high octane stunts has affected her. She said that doing explosive action scenes has trained her body to think “it’s just been in a war zone,” but that she’s fighting for more women to get work in the genre to both dispel stereotypes and elevate women’s pay.

Robbie noted that returning home from the set of Bombshell, the 2019 drama about the employees who attempted to expose Fox News’ CEO Roger Ailes’ sexual harassment, she would find her hands shaking, “There’s something physiological that happens to you when you’re acting even though your brain knows this is all make-believe.”

Also read: The Suicide Squad review: The craziest mainstream superhero movie since Ragnarok

But those responses are elevated on action films like 2016’s Suicide Squad and 2020’s Birds of Prey, where she plays anti-heroine Harley Quinn, the kind of role that affords her “those massive epic war hero runs” that the actor said girls never get. Margot has also starred in movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street, I, Tonya, Birds Of Prey and the Emancipation of One Harley Quinn and Tarzan. 

Ryan, meanwhile, will be seen in Russo Brothers’ The Gray Man. The spy drama film also star Chris Evans, Rene Jean Page and Dhanush.

(With agency inputs)