Filmmakers and real-life couple Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach have spent the past few years working on two seemingly very different movies: White Noise and Barbie. Baumbach's White Noise, which hits Netflix on Dec. 30, is an adaptation of Don LeLillo's acclaimed novel and stars Gerwig and Adam Driver as a couple whose town is threatened by an airborne toxic event. Barbie (out in cinemas July 21), which is written by Baumbach and Gerwig and directed by the latter, stars Margot Robbie as the titular doll and Ryan Gosling as Ken.
Despite having very different inspirations, Baumbach says that he feels the two movies are connected.
"I wrote White Noise, and then, once I had that in a place where I thought, okay, I've done a lot of the heavy-lifting, Greta and I started work on Barbie," says Baumbach. "So that was all sort of happening during that first year of the pandemic. They're kind of connected in a funny. The execution is different but there are aspects of the world of White Noise that actually informed some of how we looked at Barbie."
"Everything got written in 2020, they very much feel like they came out of the same place in a way," Gerwig adds. "I mean they physically came out of the same address. But I think it contributed, him working on that and us working on Barbie together."
So would the two films make for a good double bill?
"I'm not going to pitch that," says Gerwig with a laugh. "I'm sure if someone wanted to, it might be interesting. I don't know, it could be strange. I can feel how they're connected, but I don't know if anyone else will see it."
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