Lena Dunham Reveals Why She Quit The Polly Pocket Movie
She compared the situation to Greta Gerwig's Barbie.
Lena Dunham is putting the dolls away. Although the Girls creator had been working on a live-action movie adaptation of the iconic Polly Pocket doll for several years, she recently revealed that she decided to drop the project. And she didn’t mince words when explaining why.
Dunham was first announced to write and direct a Polly Pocket live-action movie in the summer of 2021, with Lily Collins attached to star as the pint-sized doll. The project gained a lot of buzz, particularly after the success of Mattel’s other blockbuster doll smash Barbie. But in her July 9 New Yorker profile, Dunham explained that she just didn’t feel she could bring the unique spark to the movie that she wanted to.
“I’m not going to make the Polly Pocket movie. I wrote a script, and I was working on it for three years,” Dunham said. “But I remember someone once said to me about Nancy Meyers: the thing that’s the most amazing about her is that the movie she makes or the movie she would be making with or without a studio, with or without notes — that somehow her taste manages to intersect perfectly with what the world wants. What a f*cking gift that is. And Nora Ephron, too, who was such a mentor to me, but always said, ‘Go be weird. Don’t kowtow to anyone.’”
Dunham went on to praise how Greta Gerwig managed to bring her own idiosyncratic touch to Barbie, and admitted she didn’t think she could do the same with Polly Pocket. “I think Greta managed this incredible feat, which was to make this thing that was literally candy to so many different kinds of people and was perfectly and divinely Greta,” Dunham said. “I felt like, unless I can do it that way, I’m not going to do it. I don’t think I have that in me. I feel like the next movie I make needs to feel like a movie that I absolutely have to make. No one but me could make it. And I did think other people could make Polly Pocket.”
It’s not immediately clear if Dunham’s exit means the Polly Pocket movie will be scrapped, or if it will just court another writer/director. After all, Barbie went through years of major cast and crew changes before it finally got made.
So, Lily Collins may still find her perfect pocket-sized home on the big screen eventually, just not with Dunham as its architect.
