Riding ‘Barbie’ success, Mattel plans more movies

Barbie was just the beginning

Lesson summary

Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. This lesson—can you believe this?—this is lesson six hundred. Six hundred topics all about what’s going on in the world, to help you expand your vocabulary, express your best ideas in English, and hopefully have a little fun at the same time.

Today’s full lesson resources are available at PlainEnglish.com/600. That is thanks to JR, who has been with us from the very beginning.

Coming up today: The Barbie movie was just the beginning. Mattel, the toymaker, has plans for multiple other movies based on its toys and games. In today’s lesson, we’ll talk a little about how Barbie was made, and also about the other Mattel movies we have to look forward to.

In the second half of the lesson, I’ll show you how to use the English phrase “get off the ground.” And we have a quote of the week. Let’s dive in!

Mattel’s plans for a cinematic universe

Mattel is a toymaker. It was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1945. Today, it has operations in 35 countries and offers its product in 150 countries.

You definitely recognize Mattel toys. Its first toy, released in 1947, was a ukelele. Okay, maybe you don’t recognize the “Uke-A-Doodle”—yes, that’s what it was called. But you probably recognize Barbie, which came out in 1959, and Ken, who followed her in 1961.

If you were more into cars, you might recognize Hot Wheels—that came in 1968. Maybe you played the card game Uno—also a Mattel brand. If you’re a parent now, you might have heard of the brand called “American Girl.” If you were a parent about ten or fifteen years ago, you definitely know about “Barney.” When I was a kid, I played with a lot of Fisher-Price toys. Mattel now owns Fisher-Price.

So they’re big in toys; they’re the second-biggest toymaker in the world, after Lego. But now—you might have heard!—they’re big in movies, too.

In 2013, Mattel formed a media division to make films and animated TV series based on its toys. The division produced animated films for television. Just one production went to the movies; it was called “Max Steel” and it was a box-office failure.

But the company reorganized this division and gave it a mandate: make big, blockbuster movies. They called it Mattel Films. Mattel didn’t have a history in moviemaking, but this strategy makes sense. The most reliable box-office hits, these days , are franchises: names and characters that moviegoers already know. Just look at the success of Marvel and superhero movies. And Mattel has a large roster of recognizable, even beloved characters.

They started with the most recognizable brand they had. The Barbie movie was first conceived in 2009, but it got off to a slow start . There were casting changes, writing changes, producing changes—but development finally got off the ground in 2018. Writing took place during the pandemic and the movie was filmed over three months in 2022.

By summer 2023, bus stops, billboards, even monuments glowed a bright pink ahead of the movie’s release in July. The media blitz worked: Barbie has already made over $1 billion at the box office.

But Barbie was just the beginning. Here are some of the other movies that Mattel has planned:

The next film is going to be Barney, the purple dinosaur who sings a catchy jingle called, “I Love You, You Love Me.” The TV show was for kids, but the movie will be about thirty-somethings who grew up in the age of Barney. The producers have suggested it might be “surreal.” I think it would have to be!

Next on the list is Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels are toy race cars. They’ve been adapted for video games before, but this will be the first live-action movie. A producer has called the film “emotional and grounded and gritty.” I don’t know what that means in the context of race cars—we’ll have to see it in the theaters together.

American Girl will be next. There have been some direct-to-tv movies featuring American Girl characters before, but this will be the first produced by Mattel itself .

After that: Big Jim? I’ve never heard of Big Jim. But I have heard of the movie “Borat,” and one of the co-producers of Borat will produce the Big Jim movie for Mattel.

Now we’re getting deeper into the schedule, and less is known about these next ones. But the company also plans movies for Matchbox toys (I think those are cars), also Polly Pocket, the Magic 8 Ball, and Thomas the trains.

There’s a movie planned for Uno! There’s going to be a movie based on a card game. One source says the movie will be “strongly inspired by the hip-hop scene in Atlanta” and will feature an American rapper in the lead role.

I didn’t see Barbie. I guess I will eventually. I like dramas, I like the story to at least be plausible. It doesn’t have to be realistic, just plausible. I don’t like the escapist, fantasy kind of movies. And I’m not into superhero movies or save the universe movies or things like that.

I have zero interest—zero—in seeing a movie based on the card game Uno!

Quote of the Week

Here’s today’s quote of the week, from Gertrude Stein: “Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.” Gratitude means being thankful. So “silent gratitude” means being thankful, but not saying it out loud.

“Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone,” Gertrude Stein says—wise words.

Next up: we’re going to talk about what it means to get off the ground.