Amy Schumer has landed the lead role in the upcoming Barbie movie, Deadline reported.
She’s blonde, she’s beautiful, and she makes girls all over the world smile.
Sony’s live action film based on the beloved Mattel toy is due out in 2018.
According to the site, the film will be a ‘fish out of water’ story in the mould of Splash of Big.
It is set in Barbieland, a world inhabited by the many different version of the doll – more than 180 – whose names, personalities and professions are defined by the particular outfit they wear.
However Schumer’s Barbie – who isn’t ‘perfect enough, is a bit eccentric and doesn’t quite fit the mould’ – is an outcast.
She then goes on an adventure in the real world, before returning to save her hometown, armed with the knowledge that real beauty is on the inside, and the key to happiness is freeing oneself from an unattainable standard of perfection.
The site claimed the film had gone through many writers and incarnations, before a funny female empowerment plot caught Schumer’s eye and she signed on.
In her 57 years, more than one billion Barbies have been sold worldwide, cementing her place as a pop culture icon.
And while her ability to take on literally any career in the world has been lauded, her impossible proportions have long been viewed as conveying an unrealistic body image to young girls.
Indeed her original measurements scaled to human size are a 36 inch chest, 18 inch waist and 33 inch hips.
In fact a graph compiled by mental health treatment site Rehabs.com in 2013 claimed a life-size barbie would not be able to hold her head up and would have to walk on all fours, in addition to only having a fraction of her intestines and liver.
However recent incarnations of the doll have been given more realistic proportions; and parent company Mattel are clearly happy with the self-critical storyline as they have signed off on it.
Barbie’s film will not be the first based on a toy: Hasbro has enjoyed massive success with its Transformers franchise, while GI Joe more than doubled its $300million budget.
However, Hasbro’s ‘girlie’ effort Jem And The Holograms was something of a flop.
Mattel actually brought its toy line – He-Man – to the big screen 20 years before Hasbro did in 1987, but it was a commercial failure.
A reboot has been in development hell for decades, with Twilight star Kellan Lutz the most recent name attached to the Most Powerful Man in the Universe.
