Lena Dunham Exits Directing the ‘Polly Pocket’ Film: “I Can’t Do It ‘My Way"

After the success of “Barbie,” Mattel went on overdrive and greenlit 14 movies, currently in development, based on games and toy lines.

One of those projects was a “Polly Pocket” movie directed by Lena Dunham and with Lily Collins rumored to star. However, Dunham has confirmed to The New Yorker that the project is no longer moving forward.

“I’m going to tell you something here that I haven’t told anyone: I’m not going to make the Polly Pocket movie,” Dunham said. “I wrote a script, and I was working on it for three years. But 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.’ And I think Greta [Gerwig] 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. 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.”

She added, “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.'”

Dunham will instead focus on TV projects like upcoming Netflix rom-com series “Too Much” and a college-centric spy series. She’s coming off having directed two films, both released in 2022, “Sharp Stick” and “Catherine Called Birdy.”

For the time being, we still have many Mattel projects still in development, including Vin Diesel attached to the “Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots” movie. The script is still being written. No director is attached.

There’s also a “Major Matt Mason” movie starring Tom Hanks as the Mattel astronaut action figure from the 1960s who lives and works on the moon. Oh, and there’s also a ‘Hot Wheels’ movie produced by J.J. Abrams

So, what 2023 has proven to us is that its two biggest hits — “Super Mario Bros” and “Barbie” — have resulted in the unleashing of an unending amount of Nintendo and Mattel movies to come in the next decade.