An inevitable downside of Barbie racing to over $1.4 billion at the box office to become a critical, commercial, cultural, and almost certainly awards season phenomenon is that Mattel would get the completely wrong idea about its success and immediately throw a slew of toyetic adaptations into development.
That’s proven to be right on the money, too, with upwards of a dozen projects currently in development that will revolve around the company’s IP in one way or another. Outside of Daniel Kaluuya’s bizarre-sounding Barney that’s being backed by A24 and described as a darker and existential spin on the purple menace, none of the rest generate much excitement at all.
And yet, in an interview with Semafor, company CEO Ynon Kreiz tried to put a different spin on his outfit’s attempt to monetize the sh*t out of everything by claiming they’ll be much more than just “toy movies.”
“This strategy is not our invention. It’s been done before. It’s whether we can execute, and we believe we can. It’s not a secret that Mattel tried to make movies before and they were viewed as ‘okay, this is marketing, this is designed to sell toys.’ You have to be authentic. We have a fan base that goes back two and even three generations in some cases. We’re tapping into that. Our brands have a place in culture. Magic 8 Ball, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em — Whac-A-Mole became part of the vocabulary. These are concepts, not toys.”
He can say that all he wants, but in no world does that even remotely justify or vindicate the decision to have Vin Diesel spearheading a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots blockbuster, especially when Real Steel is right there. Unless it turns out to be incredible like Barbie, but based on the leading man’s track record, we’d call it doubtful.
