Why the ‘Barbie’ Magic Won’t Be Easy to Recapture

Mia Galuppo
·5 min read
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As Barbie continues its global domination, grossing over $1 billion at the box office after only its third week of release, the appropriate parties continue victory laps around their respective Malibu Dream Homes.

Last week, in between fielding questions about Hollywood’s dual strikes, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and other WBD execs invoked the Barbie name several times during the company’s second-quarter earnings report, noting that the movie will be a boon to third-quarter.

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During Mattel’s quarterly earnings report at the end of July, CEO Ynon Kreiz called Barbie a “milestone” in the toymaker’s history. “The biggest shift in our strategy and in our DNA was to realize that people who buy our product are not just consumers, they are fans,” said Kreiz.

Away from Wall Street, execs and reps are parsing out lessons learned from Barbie, tempering some of the fervor by noting emulating its success (or even a fraction of its success) won’t be an easy task.

“Maybe Hollywood is smart enough, which is the funniest start to a sentence, ever,” says one producer with experience in the toy-to-screen pipeline. “But if anyone is watching Barbie and saying, ‘You know why this movie worked? It’s because of a toy’ you are taking away the wrong lesson.”

Multiple insiders note that not all toys are created equal. Barbie — a toy that has multi-generational attachments and is inextricably linked to larger cultural conversations like those of femineity and feminism — is not the same as Uno or View Master, both of which have been in development.  “What is the edge to Hot Wheels? What is the juice?,” questions a producer. (J.J. Abrams, who is attached to produce Hot Wheels via his Bad Robot banner, is said to have described it as “emotional and grounded and gritty.”)

Under Robbie Brenner, Mattel Films has been busy during the past couple of years seeding various toy properties across Hollywood. At MGM there is the Polly Pocket movie with Lena Dunham writing and directing and Lily Collins set to star, and a potential Wishbone movie.  Over at Universal, there is a Rock Em Sock Em Robots movie with Fast franchise star Vin Diesel. Skydance has a Matchbox cars project.

A Barbie sequel is still a way off (if a possibility at all) with THR previously reporting that neither producer-star Margot Robbie, director Greta Gerwig, nor co-star Ryan Gosling signed contracts with sequel options. The dual SAG and WGA strike make negotiations a non-starter for now, and when talks are able to resume prospective paydays will be buoyed by the film’s record-breaking box office.

Nonetheless, Warner Bros. is still trying to move along with another Mattel project: Hot Wheels. Sources tell THR that the studio is out to directors for a movie based on the toy racing cars, despite the project not yet having a script. Producers are hoping to keep up the project’s momentum in spite of the industry halting strike by meeting with directors, sources say. (The DGA ratified a new contract with the AMPTP in June, allowing directors to continue their dealmaking with studios.)

All of the Mattel projects could be franchise starters, making development an especially daunting process. Barbie hopscotched between several studios, with multiple filmmakers and scripts falling by the wayside before Robbie boarded as a producer and turbocharged the project by bringing in Gerwig.

Other properties have had a similarly rocky journey. Blumhouse was previously attached to a Magic 8 Ball movie before exiting the project after attempts at development, while Masters of the Universe bounced from Sony to Netflix. The streamer recently dropped the project after reportedly spending $30 million on development costs.

As for onscreen talent, there is still a wait-and-see attitude about future Mattel projects. “The bar is just higher because of the potential cheese factor,” says one top talent rep on the calculus of putting clients into toy films. With Abrams, Dunham and Daniel Kaluuya (Barney) attached, the caliber of filmmaking talent Mattel is enlisting is a promising, while several insiders lauded the company’s willingness to have both its No. 1 toy and its corporate brand serve as the butt of jokes in Barbie.

“Everyone goes in with the best of intentions but then [IP] holders go, ‘No we can’t say that about our brand!’” says one exec who has worked with major brands previously on potential projects. “They villainized the CEO of Mattel and the result of [Barbie] is everyone loves Mattel.”

Of course, Hollywood betting on the box office potential of toys and major brands in nothing new — Transformers and Lego proved successful while others have stumbled like G.I. Joe. Several years ago, a film was being pitched based on the M&Ms — the candy’s commercials have long featured CGI anthropomorphized spokescandies. The hope was to attach Will Arnett and talent of the like, according to a source.

And $1 billion in box office receipts is hard to ignore, especially during a year where sure bets have been floundering at the movie theater. Desperation can lead to questionable decision-making, says the producer with toy-to-film experience, “A lot of these other movies are going to come from executives trying to fill out release calendars.”

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