A ‘Barbie’ Sequel Shouldn’t Happen, but a Kathryn Newton-Led Skipper Spinoff Sounds Like a Blast

With the legendary success of Barbie still fresh in all of our heads, a single question has been on the minds of far too many people in the months since: Could we ever see a world where Barbie 2 happens?

Barbie writer/director Greta Gerwig herself has riffed on the possibility a few times, appropriately communicating that everything and more has already been put into the Barbie film we got, and the odds of a sequel leaving even an impression of the original’s impact are practically non-existent. It’s best, then, that Barbie dodges the cinematic franchise ray.

That’s not to say, of course, that there’s absolutely no more stories to tell in the world of Barbieland, and with Kathryn Newton apparently still harboring some unrealized Barbie-adjacent dreams, why not give a Skipper spinoff a go?

Speaking recently to Collider, Newton recounted the tale of her cheekily tenacious campaign for a role in Barbie, having eyed the shoes of Skipper—the younger sister of Barbie—to step into in particular. Alas, it wasn’t to be:

“I begged to be in the Barbie movie, too, okay? Like I sent pictures of me in my Barbie tracksuits and stuff. No dice. There’s so many Barbies. I was thinking, like, Skipper. There’s a lot of Barbies in that universe.”

So, if the powers that be will keep going with more Barbie stories anyway, Skipper starring Kathryn Newton might just be worth cooking up behind the scenes. Newton certainly has the enthusiasm for it, and where Barbie was a triumphant ode to womanhood in all its forms, a Skipper film done right could get just as much mileage out of parsing the nuances of adolescent girlhood specifically. It may have been done many times before (including by Gerwig herself, courtesy of Lady Bird), but knowing exactly how Barbie is about itself, that’s a perspective that would be more than welcome on just about any subject.

For now, though, Newton’s loaning her talents to a very different take on adolescence in Lisa Frankenstein, which is now playing in theaters.

(featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures)