It remains to be seen whether Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie will end up being the cinematic event of the summer when it hits theaters in July. But judging by the footage that Warner Bros showed off at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Tuesday, it’s certainly in the running. That footage didn’t just show us more cool Barbie Land stuff–we finally got our first look at the actual plot of the film.
Before they got to the clips, however, Gerwig and the cast of the film–including Margot Robbie (Barbie), Ryan Gosling (Ken)–came out onto the CinemaCon stage to talk about how much they loved making the movie.
“It was such an incredibly joyful experience writing and making this movie,” Gerwig said. “When I was writing it with Noah [Baumbach], there was just a point where we were making each other laugh the whole time. Then when we got to the end we were making each other cry.”
Gerwig joked that Baumbach got the urge to direct Barbie himself while they were putting the script together, but she kept his ambitions in check.
Gosling then described his initial “struggles” getting into the Ken role.
“I have to be honest: up until this point I only knew Ken from afar. I didn’t know Ken from within. And I, if I’m being really honest, I doubted my Kenergy,” Gosling quipped.
“I didn’t see it, but Margot and Greta, I feel like they conjured this out of me. I was living my life and then one day I was bleaching my hair, shaving my legs, and wearing bespoke neon outfits and rollerblading down Venice Beach. It just came on like a fever, really, Like a light scarlet fever–a pink fever.”
After a few more comments from the cast, Gerwig presented the new footage–and it’s in these clips that we finally learn some plot details: Barbie and Ken will be leaving their world and spending time in ours, not unlike the Sonic the Hedgehog movie.
It’s not the smoothest transition, of course, as we see a man slap Barbie’s butt–and Barbie responds with a punch to the jaw, which gets her arrested for assault. We also got glimpses of some other major cast members, including Kate McKinnnon as another Barbie who may not be put together quite so well as Robbie’s Barbie is, and Will Ferrell as the head of a toy company in the real world.
The Barbie movie lands in theaters July 21.
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