Lena Dunham Isn't Making a Polly Pocket Movie After All

Lena Dunham is officially out of pocket—Polly Pocket, that is. In an interview with The New Yorker, the Girls creator and star revealed that she is no longer writing and directing toy company Mattel’s Polly Pocket feature film: “I don’t think I have that in me.”

In the wake of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, it was announced that Dunham had been tapped to write and direct a movie based on another piece of beloved Mattel IP. Dunham’s Polly Pocket film was rumored to star Emily in Paris ingenue Lily Collins as the titular doll. But now, Dunham has said that her vision for a Mattel-produced Polly Pocket film did not align with the powers that be and “what the world wants.”

“I wrote a script, and I was working on it for three years,” she told The New Yorker. But Dunham ultimately walked away from the project, saying that a few female film icons inspired her to forge her own path. “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 fucking gift that is. And Nora Ephron too, who was such a mentor to me but always said, ‘Go be weird. Don’t kowtow to anyone.’”

“Greta 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,” she continued. “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.”

Dunham added that her future filmmaking goals do not align with a Polly Pocket film. “I feel like the next movie I make needs to feel like a movie that I absolutely have to make,” she said. “No one but me could make it. And I did think other people could make Polly Pocket.”

After the success of Barbie, which was nominated for eight Oscars (winning one, for best song) and made over $1 billion at the box office, Mattel Films reportedly has at least 14 films in development based on Mattel toys and IP. The projects include films based on American Girl dolls, Hot Wheels, and a horror film inspired by the Magic 8 Ball. There are also rumors swirling that Gerwig might be helming a Barbie sequel centered around Ryan Gosling’s himbo Ken, a performance that earned Gosling an Oscar nom. When asked about a potential sequel on 60 Minutes, Gerwig replied cryptically: “I guess we’ll see.”

Although Dunham is no longer developing the Polly Pocket movie, she’s got her hands full. She recently wrapped production on a romantic comedy series called Too Much, starring Hacks scene stealer Meg Stalter and The White Lotus’s Will Sharpe. Dunham wrote and directed the series for Netflix, and it features original music by her husband, Luis Felber. She told the New Yorker she’s developing a collegiate spy series for the streamer as well.

“There is a spy show that I’m creating for Netflix. It’s based on the idea that organizations like the CIA and MI6 are tapping college students in, earlier and earlier,” she said. “So it’s, basically, what happens when a group of college kids, who have all the issues, pains, and fears of college kids, are tasked with an agenda of national protection?” A young Marnie Michaels getting tapped for the CIA? Count us in.