Margot Robbie Is Positioning Lucky Chap To Become An Empire and A Legacy
Margot Robbie is much much more than just a pretty face. The producer and star of the Billion Dollar+ grossing film of 2023 Barbie is setting up her company for more than just a bit of success.
When pitching Warner Bros. and Mattel on their take of the iconic Barbie property, producer and star Margot Robbie and writer-director Greta Gerwig predicted that their film would make a billion dollars at the box office. They, of course, were right — and then some. One thing about the movie’s incredible journey to cultural ubiquity and its $1.4 billion global haul has taken Margot Robbie completely by surprise. “We didn’t say this is going to make it to the Oscars,” Robbie says, referring to the film’s awards season momentum.
In a quote to Variety Margot Robbie says, “When we finished the press tour, I was like, ‘I guess I’ll throw all the pink out of my wardrobe now.’” They all laugh. “But the fact that we’re going to the Golden Globes and all that stuff? I truly did not see that coming. I’m not trying to be modest.”
LuckyChap’s first trip to the Oscars was I, Tonya. The critical and commercial success of Barbie is the culmination of six years of work by LuckyChap, which optioned the original material and enlisted Gerwig and Noah Baumbach to write the script. At LuckyChap, Robbie isn’t a producer in name only. She asks to be cc’d on every email, is involved in managing shooting schedules and budgets and, in the case of “Barbie,” even monitored the number of gallons of pink paint needed to cover the Barbieland sets.
But it wasn’t just Barbie, the highest-grossing film directed by a woman in history, keeping Margot Robbie busy in a jam-packed year. LuckyChap had two other films in motion: Oscar winner Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, which is a sexually charged look at the British class system that plays like a more perverse Talented Mr. Ripley. Also one of our favorite films from 2023.
In the process, LuckyChap has made it clear that it’s no longer a scrappy upstart: the partners are building an entertainment empire, one that will see them putting a new spin on the Ocean’s franchise, as well as partnering with red-hot filmmaker Olivia Wilde on Naughty, a Christmas comedy that’s been likened to Bridesmaids at the North Pole.
To house its booming production enterprise, LuckyChap is outfitting new digs in L.A. Today, Robbie’s office, one of the only areas that’s fully renovated so far, boasts a plush white carpet and a rendering of a pink high heel that’s reminiscent of the iconic shot of Robbie stepping out of Barbie’s feathered shoes. Her friend also gifted her a piece from a New York street artist that has a 1950s era Barbie sitting on the floor with her stiletto pressed against the face of a crawling Ken doll. It’s a 10/10 for us. A perfect merging of Margot Robbie’s breakout performance in 2013’s Wolf of Wall Street and now, Barbie, precisely 10 years later.
Since Lucky Chap’s inception the company has grown to 13 employees, with a film division (directed by Bronte Payne) housed in one area of the office and the TV team (led by Dani Gorin) in another, all working on the 20 projects they have in active development.
