'Barbie's Success Shouldn't Mean More Live-Action Toy Movies for Mattel
The Big Picture In anticipation of the then-upcoming release of Barbie, The New Yorker ran a piece on July 2, 2023 detailing Mattel’s plans for expanding further into the world of movies. Mattel had always harbored ambitions of making it big in Hollywood and had even attempted to turn those goals into a concrete reality in 2018 by starting up a movie division headed by producer Robbie Brenner.
None of that nuance or sociopolitical timing seems to have registered with Mattel executives if that New Yorker piece is any indication. Instead, the idea now is that Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots can totally become a motion picture property, ditto everything else in the Mattel library from Polly Pocket to the Magic 8 Ball. The New Yorker article even ends with an account of a writer being hired to try and crack the story of a potential Uno adaptation.
The many problems faced by Hasbro in getting any of its films even made, let alone making movies people want to even see, should be an ominous sign for Mattel. Much like Hasbro, Mattel’s big first film success came from adapting its most famous toy line chock full of rich mythos and established characters for a feature adaptation to draw from.
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