If you were ever a six-year-old girl, you probably loved Barbie. Sure, there were tomboys (and now, Katniss/Merida wannabees) among us, but for a lot of kids the fantasy world that went along with Barbie will always have a special place in their childhood memories.
Great news for today’s kids: While the original doll is going on her 54th birthday, today marks the release of the 25th Barbie movie, going back over the past twelve years. Barbie in the Pink Shoes takes elements of Swan Lake and Giselle and combines them with a story featuring an evil queen, magic shoes and, well, the stuff princess dreams are made of. EW called up Rob Hudnut, executive producer and vice president of Barbie Entertainment at Mattel, to get the inside scoop on this anniversary milestone (they’ve sold over 110 million Barbie DVDs to date!) and find out what’s next for the woman who has done it all.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was the inspiration behind Pink Shoes?
ROB HUDNUT: We’ve had great success with ballet movies, among the 25 movies we’ve done so far. We know that girls love to do ballet and imagine themselves as prima ballerinas. So we wanted to tell a story that took a contemporary girl into a magical world of ballet, in which she has an adventure and learns some things about dancing from her heart. And she comes back to the real world changed.
Barbie has had so many occupations. How do you decide what she’ll do next?
A big part of Barbie’s connection to girls is the way she teaches them that they can do anything and be anything. So throughout her 54 years Barbie has been everything from an astronaut to mermaid to a movie star to a president. In our DVD movies, we focus on roles that girls love to imagine, that have more fantastical elements. So we have princess worlds that have a lot of magic in them, magic worlds, and fairy worlds. READ FULL STORY »
