Diablo Cody Writing New Barbie Movie

Diablo Cody famously worked as a stripper for a while, and that's sometimes just too easy a target for the media. Now that she's taking on the job of scripting a Barbie movie, based upon the toy for children, there's bound to be a lot of silliness about. Indeed, the eye-rolling started immediately. In Deadline's original story about Diablo Cody getting the gig they refer to her work as a stripper with some very specific language, talking about how she "pulled herself up," from lesser being who dances in the nude to elevated Oscar-winning Hollywood player. Cody seems like a great pick to write the Barbie movie for a number of reasons, not least that she's a very talented writer. Her script for Young Adult remains one of my favourites, of all. And her work on the as-yet unmade Sweet Valley High movie shows just how her savvy pop-sense isn't limited to quirky dialogue about burger phones. That script has all sorts of nifty ideas, not least its central concept which has one of the blonde, popular twins at the centre of the story fall into a coma and then wake up a new young woman in the midst of an identity crisis. It's an excellent deconstruction of the tropes of the original books. So, like The Lego Movie before it, Barbie will stand or fall on the quality of the work done by the filmmakers. By putting Cody at the typewriter, I think they're off to an incredible start.