‘This Is Not About Promoting Toys’_ Mattel Bosses on ‘Barbie’s’ Lengthy Improvement, Needing a Feminine Director and Extra

There’s lots driving on “Barbie.”

The much-hyped movie from Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie stands to be monumental for Mattel, turning the 78-year-old toy firm into its personal cinematic universe. But when the film falls quick, it may harm the American model that has solely simply stabilized after a protracted interval of turmoil.

A decade in the past, with the rise of e-commerce and the resultant closing of toy shops, Mattel’s gross sales have been nosediving. A cultural shift in magnificence requirements, gender norms and illustration didn’t assist the mother or father firm of the white plastic doll. Then, in 2018, after quickly biking via a handful of CEOs, Mattel introduced in a brand new boss with a giant imaginative and prescient: Ynon Kreiz, an Israeli-born businessman and former chairman of Fox Children Europe, needed to show the toy firm into an IP-driven machine, full with motion pictures, TV reveals, stage productions and theme parks. One in all his first initiatives was to launch an in-house movie division.

Now, Kreiz’s big-screen dream will lastly be put to the check. “Barbie,” the primary film to launch from Mattel Movies, hits theaters on July 21. In it, Robbie’s Barbie leaves the utopia of Barbie Land with Ken (performed by Ryan Gosling) to enter the actual world, the place she discovers, amongst different issues, the patriarchy.

“We may have accomplished one thing that’s possibly simpler and take a model that’s simpler and has much less of a historical past to handle,” Kreiz says. “Or we may have accomplished animation reasonably than stay motion. However we really needed to create one thing formidable and distinctive. And also you go principally straight to the highest with our key model.”

Early critiques have been overwhelmingly optimistic, with critics calling the movie “perfection.” However there aren’t any certain bets. The truth is, this summer time, the confirmed IP mannequin has failed on the field workplace, with blockbusters like Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Future” and DC’s “The Flash” crumbling.

However Barbie is as iconic because it will get. She’s the top-selling doll on the earth. (Final 12 months, she drove roughly one-third of Mattel’s $5.2 billion in annual income.) And a glitzy and costly advertising and marketing marketing campaign for the movie has solely added to her luster. #Barbiecore, the time period for Barbie-inspired pink vogue, has greater than 500 million views on TikTok. And who hasn’t seen the pink-painted bus stops in L.A., the double-decker buses in London, the Barbie-themed group date that aired on ABC’s “The Bachelor” and the real-life seashore home in Malibu?

If the $100 million film is a win, it not solely will function a proof of Mattel’s potential throughout the leisure trade, but in addition may revolutionize the corporate’s enterprise mannequin, tapping into content material classes that, in some circumstances, Kreiz says, are literally larger than the toy trade.

With the movie monitoring to open this weekend at $95 million to $110 million, it seems to be like Kreiz’s tinsel city imaginative and prescient may repay.

Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz with Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig on the “Barbie” set exterior of London. Kreiz confirms to Selection that the frilly manufacturing actually did trigger a world pink paint scarcity. “It’s true,” he says. Jaap Buitendijk

Barbie’s street to the large display screen has been a protracted one. Warner Bros. is the third studio to try to make a “Barbie” movie with Mattel. First, in 2009, the undertaking was arrange at Common. Then it went to Sony, the place Amy Schumer was solid because the plastic icon, after which Anne Hathaway. (“Taking this skinny blond white doll and making her right into a heroine was a tall order,” Diablo Cody, who labored on one of many failed scripts at Sony, mentioned in a latest interview. In one other interview, Schumer mentioned inventive variations led her to depart the undertaking, however she expressed her pleasure for Gerwig’s “feminist and funky” adaptation.)

When Kreiz took the reins of Mattel in 2018, considered one of his first orders of enterprise was to regain management of the “Barbie” rights when Sony’s choice expired. It was the preliminary step in his plan to open Mattel’s toy field and invite the city’s brokers, networks and studios over for a really profitable playdate.

Inside weeks of becoming a member of the corporate, the CEO met with Robbie. He believed the A-lister was the best accomplice to convey the doll to life, and she or he was eager about producing a “Barbie” film via her firm, LuckyChap Leisure. In Kreiz’s thoughts, with out Robbie there was no “Barbie.”

“It was Margot,” Kreiz says. “There was no different choice.”

The storyline for a movie about Barbie was not apparent — that’s, till Robbie steered Gerwig as a writer-director.

“Earlier than the thought of Greta got here up, we went out to a bunch of writers simply to listen to completely different concepts, and we heard a bunch of pitches,” says Robbie Brenner, the Oscar-nominated indie producer of “Dallas Patrons Membership” who was employed to run Mattel Movies. “Some have been attention-grabbing and completely different and outdoors of the field and peculiar and what you’d count on and horrible. I imply, the entire gamut. However there was nothing that ever felt prefer it was value making a film about till this concept of Greta directing the film.”

Brenner says that Mattel made a dedication to place filmmakers first — forward of toys — and that’s what is going to hold top-tier expertise like Robbie and Gerwig coming its method. “Telling good tales is telling good tales,” she says, “irrespective of in case you’re making impartial motion pictures or enormous $100 million motion pictures. It’s all in regards to the script, story, solid and the filmmakers — it’s simply doing it on a much bigger scale.”

When requested if “Barbie” may have been helmed by a person, Brenner says, “I believe we felt fairly strongly that it wanted to be advised from a girl’s perspective. To not say {that a} man can’t do it. However I believe for ‘Barbie,’ that is the last word female-empowerment film. It’s within the DNA of the film. I believe all of us felt prefer it must be a feminine.”

At Mattel headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., Mattel Movies boss Robbie Brenner poses in entrance of paintings made up of 164 pairs of Barbie’s tiny plastic sneakers. Mattel, Inc.

Gerwig needed to write down the script together with her accomplice, Noah Baumbach. And although the film is predicated on considered one of Mattel’s most-prized merchandise, Brenner and Kreiz say they have been dedicated to not meddling with what the filmmakers have been doing. “It’s not about oversight. It’s not about management. It’s about belief and the way we work with creators,” Kreiz says.

“The danger was that folks exterior of Mattel would suppose that we wish to make motion pictures to be able to promote extra toys,” he provides, considering again to his first dialog with Robbie. “And I used to be very clear that this isn’t about promoting toys. That is about creating high quality content material, creating an expertise with societal influence that folks would wish to watch. We’ve been promoting toys earlier than we made motion pictures, so we’re not depending on that.”

Nonetheless, when Gerwig’s preliminary script got here in, eyebrows have been raised inside Mattel.

“When all people learn the script right here for the primary time, I’m certain there have been issues that have been like, ‘Wow, that type of pushes issues a bit of bit,’” Brenner says. “However all of us determined there have been going to be moments the place it would really feel a bit of scary, however we’re going to be rewarded for that. Being protected on this world doesn’t work. We would like it to be daring. Barbie is daring. She’s accomplished unbelievable issues. She’s a trailblazer. And that’s what we did.”

“I’ll say,” Brenner provides, “The primary script I learn that Greta and Noah wrote is similar to the film that truly is on the display screen.”

Certainly, the film doesn’t shrink back from criticism of the corporate. One character, performed by Will Ferrell, is a Mattel CEO who represents company America. Kreiz laughs when he talks about being portrayed by the actor. “I’m a giant fan of Will, ever for the reason that ‘Zoolander’ days,” he says. “There are such a lot of components of humor and self-deprecation within the film. And we embrace that. We take our manufacturers very critically. We take what we do very critically. However we don’t take ourselves

too critically.”

Irrespective of what number of instances Mattel executives say they’re not making movies to promote toys, they do must promote toys. The hope is that with the delivery of the film division, Mattel’s merchandise and movies will amplify one another, so all the enterprise skyrockets. It’s a confirmed mannequin: Hasbro kicked off the toy blockbuster pattern in 2007 when it turned its Transformers toys right into a multibillion-dollar movie franchise with Paramount. And Warner Bros.’ 2014 “The Lego Film” made greater than $450 million and spawned two sequels.

The plan is already working. Forward of the discharge of “Barbie,” Mattel has put out a line of movie-specific dolls impressed by Robbie, Gosling, Issa Rae, America Ferrera and Simu Liu’s characters. Robbie’s Barbie immediately turned the top-selling doll on Amazon.

The corporate has dozens of movies within the works — 14 initiatives are in energetic improvement or pre-production with massive names like J.J. Abrams (“Sizzling Wheels”), Lena Dunham (“Polly Pocket”), Vin Diesel (“Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots”) and Tom Hanks (“Main Matt Mason”) — however Brenner and Kreiz aren’t certain which can go into manufacturing subsequent. This week, Selection reported that Mattel is searching for a brand new purchaser for “Masters of the Universe,” after Netflix dropped the movie that’s primarily based on beloved characters just like the superhero He-Man, that had been in improvement on the streamer. For now, Mattel is concentrated on making “Barbie” a hit.

“‘Barbie’ is a showcase for the way we work with inventive folks, but in addition whether or not our manufacturers can translate to success on-screen. As a result of that can be debated,” Kreiz says. “Not each toy can develop into a profitable film.”