Polly Pocket: Lena Dunham drops out of directing Mattel film

Lena Dunham has dropped out of directing a film about the Polly Pocket dolls, saying she didn’t think she could replicate what Greta Gerwig achieved with Barbie.

The actor and director told The New Yorker, external: “I’m not going to make the Polly Pocket movie. I wrote a script, and I was working on it for three years.”

Dunham, who created and starred in US TV comedy Girls, was enlisted to direct the Polly Pocket film in 2021.

It was also announced that Emily In Paris star Lily Collins would play the lead doll.

Robbie Brenner, the producer who runs toy company Mattel’s film division, told Variety, external last year that the script was “great” and Dunham “is so collaborative and rolls up her sleeves and really likes to roll around in notes and listen”.

However, Dunham has now said she would struggle to put her own personal stamp on it in the way Gerwig did with Barbie.

Barbie took $1.44bn (£1.2bn) at the box office, making Gerwig the most successful solo female director ever.

“I think Greta did this incredible feat, which was to make this thing that was literally candy to so many different kinds of people and was perfectly and divinely Greta,” Dunham added.

“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.”

Polly Pocket is just one of the films Mattel has in the pipeline following Barbie’s success.