How ‘Barbie’ ushered in the era of the brand movie

It took more than 10 years to bring Mattel’s fashion doll brand Barbie to the big screen, but boy, was it worth it.

Barbie, the live-action film based on the toy of the same name and co-written and directed by Greta Gerwig, became 2023’s highest-grossing movie globally with $1.44 billion earned at the box office, and it scored the biggest opening for a woman director in history. It also became a masterclass in cross-promotion, with more than 100 brand partnerships powering its premiere.

Two years later, Barbie has proven to be more than just about breaking records and barriers—it’s provided a blueprint to brands and studios that see brand-backed and brand-activated movies as reliably good business.

“We’re seeing a lot of brands want to ride this wave and try to replicate that success,” Lily Gluzberg, VP at cultural marketing agency 160over90, told Marketing Brew last year.

Lights, camera, brand action!

By the time Barbie came out, the brand takeover of Hollywood was already underway. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, based loosely on the Nintendo video game franchise, became the highest-grossing video game movie of all time the same year as Barbie’s release, while the biographical sports drama Air, based on the origin of Nike’s Air Jordan, raked in $90 million worldwide despite being, as one critic put it, “what amounts to a two-hour ad for Nike and the uber-rich.” There were also films centered on the origin stories of the video game Tetris, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and the BlackBerry, as well as one focused on Beanie Babies.

Film and TV projects powered by brands have been around long before Barbie. The Transformers franchise, based loosely on an action-figure line co-owned by Mattel rival Hasbro, has earned billions at the box office since its first installment brought in more than $700 million in 2007. And media giants have often turned children’s movies into brands in their own right, like the Despicable Me franchise, which has grossed an estimated $5.6 billion at the box office and has stretched into consumer products, video games, and a theme-park attraction. For decades, Disney has successfully parlayed its animated titles into beloved entertainment brands that break box-office records and generate eye-watering amounts of consumer-product revenue.

In the wake of Barbie’s success, other movies have gotten the brand bonanza treatment. Wicked, the first film in a two-part film series based on the hit Wizard of Oz prequel musical (which itself is based on a book series written by Gregory Maguire), was officially brand-ified with more than 400 brand partnerships; the second film reportedly had another 400 partnerships, more than half of them new, ahead of its opening weekend, which is expected to bring in anywhere from $150 million to $180 million.

Other brands that have found their way into the Hollywood lights often discover a big upside. The Brad Pitt-led F1: The Movie, released this summer, for example, was “tremendously helpful” for driving awareness and fandom around F1, Motorsport Network CEO Werner Brell told Marketing Brew this fall.

When brand movies are done well, they can become much bigger than just a trip to the theater. Rather, they’re “part of a social movement,” Stephanie Dolan, US entertainment sector leader at Deloitte, told us, “and it actually transcends a-moment-in-time marketing.” That, she added, can allow for the audience journey to continue on with the brand long after the credits roll.

But not all brand movies are destined to be hits. Netflix’s 2024 release Unfrosted, based loosely on the creation of the Pop-Tart and starring Jerry Seinfeld, was derided as being “one of the decade’s worst movies.” (Pop-Tarts owner Kellanova was uninvolved in the film’s creation, although the brand did create a digital and social campaign tied to the film’s release.)

“Although the Barbie movement sent brands to Hollywood to go explore [opportunities] in a similar fashion, I think the truth is that not all brands really can do that,” Julian Jacobs, head of UTA NY and partner and co-head of UTA entertainment and culture marketing, told Marketing Brew last year.

Keep the brand ball rolling

There’s plenty of incentive for brands and studios to band together one way or another. Studio execs facing industry headwinds are looking for stories and subjects guaranteed to pique audience interest. Brand marketers are eager to reach viewers in less-cluttered environments. Splitting the costs of promotion—through endless product collabs, joint marketing efforts, or both—can serve to sweeten the deal.

“IP has always been at the center and core of a studio’s value proposition,” Dolan said. “Especially recently, as the costs to produce traditional content have increased, and the revenue that they’re seeing coming from that content has decreased, there’s a pressure that they’ve been feeling lately to make sure that the return on their investments are much more predictable.”

Toy brands, especially ones that have been around for decades, come with a built-in fandom that can help studios reduce financial risk and unlock even more IP ecosystems after the feature film. According to Deloitte’s 2024 Digital Trends Report, more than 50% of movie fans say they “wish more of their favorite movies and TV shows had video game experiences”—which toy brands-turned-film franchises like Lego and, yes, Barbie, have indulged for decades.

“You have this fanbase that helps the movie be successful, but for that piece of IP to be in the story narrative itself also feeds into the fandom around that piece of marketing or that consumer product,” Dolan said. “That symbiotic nature…is really creating this new ecosystem around marketing and studios and extending to other places, like social media as an example, to really amplify these moments.”

Brands showing up on the big screen are likely to continue. In 2024, sequels, prequels, and remakes tied to existing entertainment brands dominated the box office, while in 2025, between half and 70% of new major studio film releases were expected to come from existing IP, according to CNBC. Meanwhile, brands like AB InBev, LVMH, Mailchimp, Neutrogena, Nike, Saint Laurent, and Starbucks have created their own production companies to support even more brand-forward projects, ranging from documentaries to feature-length films.

Mattel, meanwhile, is raiding its own IP to find out how to bring even more of its brands to the silver screen. More than a dozen projects are reportedly in the works, including feature films based on Barney, He-Man, and Polly Pocket, while an additional 45 were reportedly in development as of 2023.

It’s not the only company looking to bring more toy brands to life. Universal Pictures has announced three live-action Lego movies, Story Kitchen has teamed up with Toys”R”Us Studios to develop a film about the toy-store chain, and Sony Pictures, is reportedly working on a movie centered on Labubus. Like the blind-box dolls, though, with a brand-turned-movie, you never know what you’re going to get.

This is one of the stories of our Quarter Century Project, which highlights the various ways industry has changed over the last 25 years. Check back each month for new pieces in this series and explore our timeline featuring the ongoing series.

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