Greta Gerwig will receive the Director of the Year Award at next year’s Palm Springs International Film Festival in California. The prestigious film festival, which has been taking place each January since 1989, will celebrate its 35th year in 2024, with several award honourees already announced alongside Gerwig.
The 40-year old director of this year’s highest grossing film, ‘Barbie’, will join just a handful of other women to have previously won Director of the Year Awards at the film festival. They include Chloé Zhao (‘Nomadland’), Jane Campion (‘The Power of the Dog’) and Sarah Polley (‘Women Talking’).
Campion and Zhao went on to win Best Director awards at the Oscars for their respective films.
This week, the festival’s Chairman Nachhattar Singh Chandi released a statement, describing Gerwig as a director who has created “the cinematic experience of the year with Barbie, the perfect blend of comedy, emotion and adventure that has both entertained and resonated with audiences.”
“[The movie] became a cultural touchstone around the world,” Chandi said.
“Gerwig is a masterful filmmaker, and her vision is brought to life so vividly by both the script she co-wrote with Noah Baumbach, and by her clear and singular collaboration with her extraordinary crafts teams, whose visuals are matched only by the outstanding performances delivered by Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and the entire cast. It is our honour to present the Director of the Year Award to Greta Gerwig.”
‘Barbie’ was one of cinematic history’s highest grossing films — earning almost US$1.442 billion worldwide. Gerwig became the first female director to helm a film that surpassed US$1 billion in global ticket sales. On its opening weekend in July, it broke records, grossing over US$358 million worldwide, making it the biggest debut ever for a film directed by a woman.
Just last month, it ended its record-breaking streak of 12 weeks on the US box office top 10 List. When the DVD version of the movie was released in October, it topped both the Blu-ray-only and overall packaged media charts in its debut week.
If the movie takes home Best Picture at next year’s Academy Awards, it will become only the second billion dollar movie to do so, after Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King’ in 2004. Gerwig has also been tipped to be nominated for Best Director. The nominations for next year’s Oscars will take place in late January, 2024.
Rumors that the movie may have a sequel were quashed this week after its leading star, Margot Robbie told The Associated Press “I think we put everything into this one. We didn’t build it to be a trilogy or something.”
“Greta put everything into this movie, so I can’t imagine what would be next. It doesn’t have to be a sequel or prequel or a remake, it can be totally original,” Robbie said.
“It can still be big ― given the big budget to do that. And just because there’s a female lead doesn’t mean it’s not going to hit all four quadrants, which is, you know, I think a misconception that a lot of people still have.”
A month after the release of ‘Barbie’, Gerwig herself said there were no plans to make the film into a franchise.
“I feel like that at the end of every movie, like I’ll never have another idea and everything I’ve ever wanted to do, I did,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to squash anybody else’s dream but for me, at this moment, I’m at totally zero.”
In October, she admitted her movie’s success was possible only due to Patty Jenkins’ 2017 movie, ‘Wonder Woman’.
“There was absolutely nothing to point to before — we weren’t able to use anything as what they call a ‘comp,’ [comparision], Gerwig said.
“That’s how they build budgets, and they assess risk. I know we wouldn’t have been able to make this movie had Patty Jenkins not made Wonder Woman. But at the same time, we weren’t able to use Wonder Woman as an example, because superheroes are their own category. You can’t use Disney Princesses because that’s its own category. This didn’t really have a thing that we could point to.”
“Now this is a comp that other people can use and say, ‘Well, it works here.’ It’s a female character, and it’s a comedy, and Noah [Baumbach] and I wrote it, lady director, all of these things — it’s big, and that worked. So hopefully, with other female characters looking forward, that helps.”
Gerwig is now working on adapting ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ for Netflix.