What Hollywood learned from Barbie

[Harold Hallikainen]

What Hollywood learned from Barbie?

Make more movies about women?

No...

Make more movies about toys!

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/randa...b0ee8ece70a75c

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Looking back to the 50's and up into the 90's it was all done the other way round. Toys were made from movies, and to great profit for those that raked it in. George Lucas always said that getting the profit from all the Star Wars toys is really what made him.

[Marcel Birgelen]

TL;DR or what do they say those days?

But, I doubt that the lesson to be learned is to make more movies about women nor toys...

Barby had your cringe meters constantly stuck at 11, but much of the stuff in there was just beyond hilarious...

Beyond that, it's the controverse that this movie keeps stirring up that's driving much of the box office. You have to see it to have an opinion.

The lesson to be learned is:

Make movies that people want to see.
Really, how hard can it be?

At the movie theater, we all love to go,
Where films and stories, to us, they show.

The actors perform, a brilliant sight,
Bringing joy and laughter, a delight.

The big screen flickers, the lights dim low,
As we settle in, our hearts aglow.

Popcorn in hand, our favorite treat,
We eagerly wait for the movie's beat.

The story unfolds, we're swept away,
Into a world of adventure, come what may.

We laugh, we cry, we hold our breath,
As the heroes fight for life and death.

When the credits roll and the lights come up,

We leave the theater with a satisfied grin,
For the joy of the movies will always win.

And I'm just Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen

[Martin McCaffery]

Give more work to Greta Gerwig.

[Steve Guttag]

Every great director has their flops so that isn't even key. I wouldn't presume her next movie would be a flop but nothing is guaranteed. What Hollywood, typically, "learns" is, "more of the same." Rather than give me something entertaining and different.

[Mike Blakesley]

I'm sure six or seven Barbie sequels are already being written.

The trick is going to be getting the next few Christopher Nolan movies to line up with them.

I also read somewhere that there are now something like 14 other movies based on Mattel toys in development. I'm sure eventually we'll see a "Mattel Studios" logo on the movies.

Personally I don't care what they do, as long as they make movies of quality that put butts in the seats and don't release them on video too fast.

[Steve Guttag]

You know what would have been cool in a Mattel movie like Barbie? Put a commercial for a movie in there...kindof the reverse for how Barbie was advertised.

Sequels are easy decision as you know there is a market but what you don't know is how much fall off you'll get for the sequel. It is rare (but it happens) for a sequel to beat the original but normally, there is some amount of fall off...until you beat the horse into the ground.

It is still better to have a new idea. The payoffs are a lot higher...but so is the risk. When one thinks of the blockbusters of the '70s and into the '80s...Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T....they weren't coming off a successful franchise. They were from two successful directors/storytellers.

[Leo Enticknap]

I'm sure six or seven Barbie sequels are already being written.

Which would be ironic if so, because some commentators are opining, as Steve notes, that the main lesson to be learned from Barbenheimer and Sound of Freedom is that audiences have had it with franchises and sequels, and are looking for original ideas in their movies.

If so, the -heimer part is possibly more promising. Not a direct sequel, obviously, but there are other Cold War stories out there that either haven't been filmed at all, or not for a long time: the Rosenbergs and how the Soviets got the bomb, the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil defense/duck and cover stuff (there were a spate of movies in the '80s, e.g. Red Dawn and The Day After, but nothing much since) the fall of the wall and the end of the Cold War (several European movies but nothing that I am aware of from Hollywood).

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess one major problem is that most current CEOs don't have a real stake in the future of the company anymore. They only operate for their own short-term benefit and that of the stockholders, which is also more often than not, focussed on the short term.

While it may not be a guarantee for success, in the "olden days", when many big companies were tied to families and their families future and fortune was often largely dependent on the empire they built and maintained. The last studio that had some of this herritage left in it's blood may have been Disney, but that's now gone too. There is nobody left that has any genuine stake in the future of any of those former Hollywood giants and that's why those studios run in photocopier zombie mode, most of them part of some super-sized conglomorate. Just do what has been proven to work in the past, because that's supposed to be the low-risk strategy.

If they genuinely think that the conclusion of Barbie's success is that people want to see more than a dozen similar movies, this only shows how far detached from reality those Hollywood studios have become, especially after the recent non-stop string of "franchise related" box office disasters.

Sequels are easy decision as you know there is a market but what you don't know is how much fall off you'll get for the sequel. It is rare (but it happens) for a sequel to beat the original but normally, there is some amount of fall off...until you beat the horse into the ground.

It is still better to have a new idea. The payoffs are a lot higher...but so is the risk. When one thinks of the blockbusters of the '70s and into the '80s...Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T....they weren't coming off a successful franchise. They were from two successful directors/storytellers.

There are only a few stories sufficiently grand, they warrant a sequel. or prequel. Star Wars may have been one of them, but even that got stretched thin over the years.
Indiana Jones was fun while it lasted, any attempts to reinvigorate that franchise have painfully failed. The previous sequel even coined the catch-phase "Nuking the fridge". Any sequel to e.g. E.T. would've felt like the cheap cash-grab that it would've been and still Hollywood is poised to make it...

Sometimes, a sequel can be highly anticipated, especially if it's set in an interesting universe that still has a lot of exploration left. Making a sequel for e.g. Blade Runner was an obvious choice, as we left this world in 1982, largely unexplored. But, on the other hand, is anybody really waiting for another Star Wars sequel? Maybe go fix the last trilogy first before even making an attempt at it...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Marcel, I never looked at the later Star Wars movies as sequels, but as feature length Serials. In cases where one story has the same characters as the next, Serial fits better. Same for Raiders of the lost Ark. And some of the comic book movies.

[Mike Blakesley]

Hollywood never really learns anything, we should all know that by now. Look how they completely ignored the "long window" lesson that they should have learned from Top Gun Maverick.

They should have done for Indiana Jones what was done for James Bond.... get a different guy to play him every few movies and just go on forever. Maybe a black, Asian, female, gay, or trans Jones is on the horizon. Nothing would surprise me with Disney.

[Scott Norwood]

The obvious lesson here is that movies about toys are more popular than movies about physicists. Which is sad, but probably not unexpected. Coming soon: Connect Four--The Movie.

(I haven't seen Barbie, personally, and have zero interest in it. Maybe it's great. I will probably never know.)

[Lyle Romer]

The obvious lesson here is that movies about toys are more popular than movies about physicists. Which is sad, but probably not unexpected. Coming soon: Connect Four--The Movie.

(I haven't seen Barbie, personally, and have zero interest in it. Maybe it's great. I will probably never know.)

The movie about physics did a lot better than a lot of movies about other things so there is a little glimmer of hope for humanity. Who would have guessed a 3 hour historical documentary about a physicist in the 1940s would be a worldwide blockbuster. Even though it pales in comparison to Barbie, it's still going to do a $750 million+ worldwide box office.

[Mike Blakesley]

(I haven't seen Barbie, personally, and have zero interest in it. Maybe it's great. I will probably never know.)

I had zero interest in it, until seeing the two stars at CinemaCon, who were so good at promoting it, they made me want to see it. Then I started hearing about how it was "better than I thought it would be" from many moviegoers, so I decided I really did want to see it.

Saw it, didn't like it. It was cute and clever, but I can't say I remember much about it or have any desire to see it again.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

TL;DR or what do they say those days?

But, I doubt that the lesson to be learned is to make more movies about women nor toys...

Barby had your cringe meters constantly stuck at 11, but much of the stuff in there was just beyond hilarious...

Beyond that, it's the controverse that this movie keeps stirring up that's driving much of the box office. You have to see it to have an opinion.

The lesson to be learned is:

Make movies that people want to see.
Really, how hard can it be?

At the movie theater, we all love to go,
Where films and stories, to us, they show.

The actors perform, a brilliant sight,
Bringing joy and laughter, a delight.

The big screen flickers, the lights dim low,
As we settle in, our hearts aglow.

Popcorn in hand, our favorite treat,
We eagerly wait for the movie's beat.

The story unfolds, we're swept away,
Into a world of adventure, come what may.

We laugh, we cry, we hold our breath,
As the heroes fight for life and death.

When the credits roll and the lights come up,

We leave the theater with a satisfied grin,
For the joy of the movies will always win.

And I'm just Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen

Well, nothing's being written yet. Writers rejected the latest contract offer. But I suspect you are right. I'm holding out for "The Erector Set Movie".