In 2021, it was revealed that a Polly Pocket movie was in the works with Lena Dunham writing and directing. Lily Collins was attached to star.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Lena revealed, “I’m going to tell you something here that I haven’t told anyone: I’m not going to make the Polly Pocket movie. I wrote a script, and I was working on it for three years. 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.”
Lena continued, “And Nora Ephron, too, who was such a mentor to me, but always said, “Go be weird. Don’t kowtow to anyone.” And I think Greta [Gerwig] managed this incredible feat [with Barbie], which was to make this thing that was literally candy to so many different kinds of people and was perfectly and divinely Greta. And I just—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.”
If you don’t know, Polly Pocket is a popular children’s toy set that began in the 1980s. There have been television shows, games, toys, and more that have blossomed from the children’s play set.