Barbie owners Mattel are not going to miss out on cashing in on their other products to make money spinning movies.
Is it the Lego movie success all over again?
Barbie owners Mattel
“Barbie, as a brand, has many different iterations. The product lines of Barbie is a very broad brand. In addition to the main Barbie figure, she has family, she has a lot of elements around in her universe,” Mattel chief executive Ynon Kreiz said to Variety. “It’s a very rich universe… It’s a very broad and very elastic brand, in terms of opportunities.”
“At the outset, we’re not saying, ‘Okay, let’s think already about movie two and three.’ Let’s get the first one right and make that a success. And if you do that, opportunities open up very quickly, once you establish the first movie as a successful representation of a franchise on the big screen.”
“Successful movies lend themselves to more movies,” the CEO added. “Our ambition is to create film franchises.”
Pop Base
Mattel Exces reveal they want to essentially create a cinematic universe following the success of #Barbie with 14 properties already in active development, including:
- Barney
- Polly Pocket
- Hot Wheels
- Magic 8 Ball
- UNO
- Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots
- Christmas Balloon
- Thomas and Friends
- American Girl
- View Master
- Matchbox
- Wishbone
- Major Matt Mason
- Masters of the Universe
Box office
Barbie is now on track to become the biggest film released so far this year, ahead of Super Mario Bros, and Oppenheimer one assumes.
Barbie’s marketing campaign was huge with debut takings worldwide of $337m (£293m).
US and Canada takings were enough to make it the biggest opener of 2023 so far in North America.
According to Billboard, film polling service PostTrak reported that women made up 65% of the Barbie audience, while 40% of ticket-buyers were under the age of 25.
Related: Barbie posters: Angry one star reviews reused and it is amazing
