MAT TEL: REWRITING A TOY STORY
Toymakers take a small percentage of amovie’s revenue. But a hit can drive toy salesand make even dormant brands relevant.103
FORTUNE.COM // DECEMBER 2019
cast as a comedy. In 2016, the studio chose comic Amy Schumer
for the role. She dropped out a year later.
The appeal of making movies is straightforward: It can drive toy
sales and make even dormant brands relevant. Hasbro has cashed
in on its Transformers line, for example, with a series of live-action
films directed by Michael Bay. DreamWorks Animation, now
owned by NBCUniversal, bought rights to a beloved European doll
with almost no revenues attached to it and turned the Trollz into
box-office successes and consistent toy moneymakers (again, for
Hasbro). Toymakers take a small percentage of a movie’s revenue,
the lion’s share going to the studio and distributors. But a buzzy
movie moves merchandise.
Kreiz describes Mattel’s moviemaking potential as if he were
talking about Disney. “Our brands are holistic, not violent,” he
says. “They are wholesome.” To jump-start the business, he hired
Robbie Brenner, a veteran producer who cut her teeth at Mira-
max and achieved indie success with the 2013 hit Dallas Buyers
Club. Brenner considered hundreds of potential directions Mattel
could go in. “I distilled it down to 40,” she says. She landed on
some obvious choices—Barbie, Hot Wheels, and American Girl,
all of which are now in early stages of development—and some
less obvious, including Magic 8 Ball, a venerable “toy box” denizen
buried so deeply in the company’s bowels that it didn’t merit a
mention in Mattel’s annual report.
All told, Mattel has announced eight film projects with at least
four different studios. Barbie and Hot Wheels, for example, are
at Warner Bros. MGM plans to make an American Girl movie. A
and Marriage Story, respectively. But the
payoff for Barbie is anything but certain. The
project lacks a director or a production sched-
ule. Kreiz says the film strategy is tracking
ahead of schedule and will begin paying off
“not in the distant future.”N MATTEL’S OCTOBER, not-bad-news-is-
good-news earnings call, a Wall Street
analyst who long had been bearish asked
Kreiz to discuss his vision for the
company’s next steps beyond its current
plans. Kreiz sidestepped the question, keeping
to his script as any good CEO, or actor, would.
Asked days later to take another stab at the
vision question, Kreiz stays on message: “What
we say is that we’re focused on executing the
strategy. There’s tremendous value simply in
running this company well.” It’s an adequate
answer, especially if he can drive up Mattel’s
margins closer to Hasbro’s. Kreiz bristles at the
suggestion that he’s merely copying Hasbro,
which tried buying Mattel several times before
Kreiz joined the company. “Yes, they run an
efficient toy company,” he says. “Yes, we’re mak-
ing movies.” But he thinks Mattel’s untapped
potential—all those under-loved brands—isFEEDBACK [email protected]
live-action adventure about Major Matt Mason,
starring Tom Hanks, is being shepherded by Para-
mount. (Mason, a nearly dormant astronaut action
figure, was created at Mattel in 1966; Hanks has
been connected to the movie project since 2011.)
The spreading of the wealth allows Mattel to move
quickly, its executives say. “We don’t want to park
at one studio,” says Brenner, referring to what Hol-
lywood calls a slate deal—the kind of exclusive studio pairing that
Hasbro has with Paramount. “We can progress concurrently on a
number of projects at scale,” says Kreiz. With a slate deal, “it would
have taken years to do eight projects.”
No brand is more important symbolically than Barbie. At 60 years
of age, Barbie still represents a fifth of Mattel’s sales. She also has
been a long-evolving mirror of global culture. Says Mattel’s Dickson,
Barbie’s creative guardian: “Fifty percent of our doll business is ‘non-
original body’ or non-Caucasian.” A surprise hit has been Barbie dolls
in the image of K-pop band BTS. Like Barbie’s longtime companion,
Ken, the members of BTS are boys. (Mattel also recently launched its
first gender-neutral dolls, a new line called Creatable World.)
Earlier this year, Mattel announced the lead for its Barbie movie:
Margot Robbie, an Oscar nominee whom W magazine noted “kind
of does look like an actual live-action Barbie doll” (in female,
Caucasian form). To write the script, Warner signed the prestigious
team of Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, each of whom has a
major film being released for this year’s holidays—Little Women
different. “I believe our franchise catalog is
unique. There’s nothing like it, next to Disney.”
When Kreiz talks about Mattel’s potential,
Disney is a constant point of reference. Their
strategies are the inverse of each other. While
Mattel is about leveraging its brand “outside
the toy aisles,” in Kreiz’s words, Disney is about
exploiting its characters with multimedia sto-
ries that morph into high-value merchandise.
But Kreiz, emphasizing that “journeys start in
different places,” insists Mattel has powerful
characters too, characters Disney doesn’t have.
So would he sell the company to Disney, as
he’s done twice before? The disciplined CEO
answers in predictable fashion: “At this time,
I’m focused on running Mattel the best I can,”
he says. If he has his eye on a fairy-tale happy
ending, in other words, he’s not saying.