Barbie’s back! Reese Witherspoon signs on for a VERY exciting film

If Barbie were to take human form – and we mean in a pleasant way, not in a surgically enhanced 30JJ boobs way – we reckon she'd be a dead ringer for Reese Witherspoon.

So it seems fitting that the actress has just bought the movie rights to a book about the famous Mattel doll and how she came to be.

After critical acclaim – and an Oscar nomination – for her self-produced films Wild and Gone Girl, Reese has set plans in motion for another dinger of a movie.

Robin Gerber's 2012 tome, The Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her, details Barbie's history and that of her creator, Ruth Handler.

Before Barbie's time, most dolls for kids took the form of children, rather than adults. Ruth became inspired to create a more modern, worldly doll after watching her young daughter playing with paper dolls.

In fact, the doll's original design was based on a German "adult toy" named Bilb Lilli that Ruth and her Mattel-employed husband found while travelling around Europe.

While Barbie dolls have been criticised in the past for giving young girls unrealistic beauty ideals, Reese's film will no doubt take a more well-rounded view.

The actress has been called a "modern-day feminist" for her campaign to feature women in stronger film roles, and says it's something that needs to change both on screen and off.

"Women make up 50 percent of the population and we should be playing 50 percent of the roles on the screen," she said last month at the American CInematheque Fete.

"We need more female surgeons, supreme court justices and soldiers – but on screen. Not just as the girlfriends to famous men."

There's no production date for Reese's new film yet, but we're already excited.