Judd Apatow criticizes Barbie Oscar categorization: “It’s insulting”
Warner Bros.Director Judd Apatow has called out the Oscars for placing Greta Gerwig’s Barbie script in one specific category.
Oscar season is on its way, with one potential frontrunner being Barbie, the Margot Robbie starring summer blockbuster directed by Greta Gerwig.
The movie has found itself making the shortlist for several categories so far, including Best Music, Best Original Song, Best Sound, and many expect the movie to be nominated for the big leagues, that being Best Film, Best Actor/Actress, Best Director, and so on.
But one potential category is Best Adapted Screenplay, and while any Oscar nomination sounds great, one particular director has criticized this news. And it isn’t Gerwig, but Judd Apatow.
Judd Apatow calls Barbie Oscar categorization “insulting”
Judd Apatow, known for directing movies like Trainwreck, Knocked Up, and This is 40, has publicly disagreed with the Academy on their decision to classify Barbie as an adapted screenplay rather than original.
Variety revealed on Wednesday that Barbie, which Gerwig co-wrote with her husband Noah Baumbach, was only eligible to compete for a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, despite the fact that the movie’s team had been campaigning for a Best Original Screenplay nod.
In Gerwig’s defense, Apatow took to X (previously Twitter) to lament the decision: “It’s insulting to the writers to say they were working off of existing material,” he posted. “There was no existing material or story. There was a clear box.”
This decision has likely been made due to Barbie and Ken, the leads of the movie, being based on pre-existing doll characters. Each Academy Award category has its own rules for what can be nominated, and multiple nominated movies about pre-existing characters, such as the Before Sunrise sequels or Toy Story 3, were thus classified as Adapted Screenplays. Barbie is a well-known brand with its own lore that has transformed over decades, and arguably, this lore is heavily called upon in the movie’s story and message.
Many fellow Twitter users appear to believe the same, thus disagreeing with Apatow’s sentiments. One user states, “If Barbie is not based on anything existing, then why do we all understand the relationship between Barbie and Ken instantly, and why do we understand why Alan is funny, and why is literally the entire film about our cultural relationship with this doll and what it represents?”
Check out other responses below:
Though of course, others agreed with the director:
In spite of all this, the Writers Guild of America has kept their categorization of Barbie as an original script, and that will remain the case for the upcoming WGA Awards.
Official Academy Award nomination voting will commence on January 11.
For more of our Movies & TV coverage, click here.
