Margot Robbie‘s Barbie payday was projected at $50 million. It went higher. She and Ryan Gosling are still without a deal for Barbie 2.
The numbers behind the biggest film in the studio’s history have surfaced, and a follow-up has stalled over pay. Six offers have come and gone in three years. Four months now remain before the rights to the doll leave the studio.
Margot Robbie’s reported Barbie earnings come as Warner Bros. and the sequel’s core team remain at odds over new deals
Margot Robbie was projected to make roughly $50 million from the first Barbie, a total covering salary and back end. A studio source placed her final compensation “well ahead” of that Margot Robbie $50 million projection. Tens of millions went to Greta Gerwig on the same film.
A follow-up to the highest-grossing movie in Warner Bros. history is now in peril, The New York Times reported recently. Talks over the deal have stalled.
David Zaslav has dug in against the team’s pay demands, which many sources call massive but justifiable. This could be his final stretch running Warner Bros. Discovery.
Gerwig leads the creative team in the discussions. She became the most successful woman director ever after the first film passed $1.4 billion worldwide. Noah Baumbach joins her as co-screenwriter, alongside Ryan Gosling as male lead and Robbie as producer and star.
The studio has made more than six offers across the past three years. The creative team has rejected all of them.
Late this spring brought the most recent. A studio source called it the highest the company has ever offered a filmmaking team and its stars, and one source described “life-changing money.” Another deal source pushed back on that, arguing the “package” price for all four might be historic while individual pay is not. CAA reps all four, in a process Bryan Lourd leads, and it has not countered the latest offer. Gerwig’s lawyer Tara Kole is also involved.
Margot Robbie’s salary for the Barbie movie sits among several considerable new asks, sources say. Those cover pay bumps in upfront fees and generous increases in back-end participation, though Baumbach would see a fee hike only. Gosling reportedly wants $20 million to play Ken again.
One source said upfront salaries satisfy the team, but back-end terms do not. Another disputed both claims. The team is not asking for first dollar gross, which would have paid them from the box office pot before the studio recouped anything. No Barbie sequel happens unless Warner Bros. moves, according to an insider close to the deal.
Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, the studio’s film chiefs, have roughly four months to move a Barbie 2 into active development. Otherwise the doll rights revert to Mattel.
TELL US – WHO DO YOU THINK WILL BLINK FIRST — WARNER BROS. OR THE BARBIE TEAM?
