How do you follow a phenomenon like “Barbie?” That was the task put in front of Robbie Brenner, President of Mattel Studios and Chief Content Officer in the wake of the $1.4 billion-grossing, Oscar-winning feminist blockbuster that served as the opening salvo for the Mattel Studios brand.
Brenner joined the company in 2018, and at first it seemed like a surprising fit. Brenner had cut her teeth working for Miramax in the 1990s, later serving in executive roles at 20th Century Fox and Relativity and producing indies like “Dallas Buyers Club.” Perhaps it’s exactly that foundation that spurred Brenner to enthusiastically hire Greta Gerwig to co-write and direct “Barbie” – and, crucially, to give Gerwig the freedom to make something truly unique.
“For me, I feel like if we’re not trying to raise the bar on every single movie that we’re doing, if we’re not doing something that feels unexpected and that has a reason to exist, then we shouldn’t be doing it,” Brenner told TheWrap for our latest Office With a View. “We want to set the bar really high. And we’ll take swings, and sometimes maybe they won’t work, but at least we’re taking a swing and we’re making bold choices.”
So with Oscars and box office records in tow, Brenner – who was promoted to oversee both film and TV for all of Mattel Studios earlier this year – has set about crafting a slate that is filmmaker-driven, dramatically diverse in tone and has projects set up at just about every major studio in Hollywood.
2026 will see the release of “Masters of the Universe,” a fantasy action epic directed by Laika founder and stop-motion filmmaker Travis Knight. The Amazon MGM Studios release will be anchored by “The Idea of You” heartthrob Nicholas Galitzine and is a “huge spectacle” that “deals with masculinity in a very fun, funny way.” After that is “Matchbox,” a gritty and grounded take on the toy car brand starring John Cena and directed by stuntman-turned-filmmaker Sam Hargrave. That one will stream on Apple TV+.
There’s also an A24 “Barney” movie written by Ayo Edebiri, a “Hot Wheels” movie from “Wicked” director Jon M. Chu and producer J.J. Abrams that’s set up at Warner Bros. and a “Monster High” adaptation at Universal that just tapped “M3GAN” filmmaker Gerard Johnstone to direct.
And, just announced, the “Barbie” craze will continue with an animated film at Illumination Entertainment. “For 66 years, Barbie has been a canvas for girls’ imagination, showing them they can be anything and inspiring their limitless potential,” Brenner said. “Chris Meledandri and the Illumination team are the North Star of animation — visionary storytellers with a remarkable ability to create worlds that are wildly inventive and emotionally rich. We are thrilled to partner with them to bring Barbie’s animated theatrical debut to life in a way that will resonate with audiences of all ages.”
Mattel doesn’t self-finance its projects (yet — Brenner hinted that may be in the cards in the future) so its slate can afford to be diverse and robust.
“To be able to be diversified and to be working in all sorts of places just gives us an opportunity to really move things down the field simultaneously,” she said. “I think it’s a great way to do it, because some people do certain things better than others.”
Through it all, Robbie aims to empower each project’s director to find something unique to say with their respective Mattel property and, hopefully, offer audiences something unexpected.
Read our full interview below to get a look under the hood of how Mattel Studios aims to make-good on the “Barbie” promise of thought-provoking blockbusters.
You were running production at Relativity and producing Oscar-nominated films and indies. What spurred you to join Mattel in the first place?
The movies that I produced and made are movies that are either true life stories or just stories that I feel like for myself need to be told, so the last thing that I was thinking about in my life was coming to Mattel. It really kind of fell out of the sky. I had just met with Risa Gertner, who was at CAA, and we were having a general meeting and she connected me with (Mattel CEO) Ynon Kreiz. We had breakfast one morning and we just really hit it off. I met somebody that was really a kindred spirit, we really saw eye to eye creatively. At one point he said to me, if anybody could be Barbie, who would you imagine it could be? And I said, “Well, Margot Robbie,” and he was like, “That’s so funny, because we’ve been speaking to Margot.” We just really had a shared vision. After more meetings with people at Mattel, I took the job and started two months after he did. My first day, I was looking at all these incredible titles, we have a list of like 200 titles that sit in the Mattel library. I spent the first week that I was here distilling this larger list down to a smaller list of the 40 or 45 movies that I thought can have a real theatrical experience, and then I kind of built from there.
The first film out of the gate is “Barbie” and it’s not only a massive hit, it’s a cultural phenomenon. Did you have an inkling it’d be that big?
Well for starters, that was the last movie that I thought we would make first, just because everybody has a relationship and a touchstone with Barbie. We would have to thread the needle so perfectly. Before even meeting Greta, I think we had heard like 40 different pitches of Barbie and none of them quite got there. Margot brought Greta to the table and I was like “Are you kidding me? If we could have Greta Gerwig direct this movie, forget it. That would be amazing.” We met with Greta and Noah Baumbach and she talked about her love and affinity for Barbie, and she had this idea that it lived in between a Birkenstock and a high heel. I thought that was just so genius. It’s definitely one of the most memorable moments of my life, reading that script. I’d say seeing the movie for the first time, I think we knew how special it was going to be. You could just tell by the visceral reaction to the movie from the very beginning that we had something that was unique.
It’s a great film but it’s also delightfully strange. I have to imagine there was a lot of trust put in Greta that paid off, and looking at the movies and filmmakers you’ve announced, it feels like you’re continuing to invest in artists to paint a unique canvas. Is that something you’re cognizant of going forward, and one of the takeaways from “Barbie?”
Absolutely. For me, I feel like if we’re not trying to raise the bar on every single movie that we’re doing, if we’re not doing something that feels unexpected and that has a reason to exist, then we shouldn’t be doing it. There’s too much noise in the marketplace, you have to give people a reason to want to get off the couch and actually go to the movies. I always like to use the words sticky and different and authentic. We don’t want to create mediocrity. We want to set the bar really high. We want to do things that feel different and unexpected. And we’ll take swings, and sometimes maybe they won’t work, but at least we’re taking a swing and we’re making bold choices.
I feel like that’s the way we’ve approached the entire slate, whether it’s “Barney” with Ayo Edebiri writing and Daniel Kaluuya producing. And there’s “Masters of the Universe,” which is the complete antithesis of what “Barbie” is. “Barbie” was all about femininity and embracing feminism and the issues around all of that, and “Masters” is fun and it’s a huge spectacle and it’s something totally different. It deals with masculinity in a very fun, funny way. [Director] Travis [Knight] is just a visionary. He’s an incredible filmmaker. I think that people are going to be so delighted with this new rendition. I think people are kind of over swords and capes, and we need to find something different. This movie is heartfelt, it’s fun, the action is amazing. It’s inspirational, it’s aspirational. It’s a coming-of-age story with an amazing, colorful, insane backdrop.
You have so much in development right now. What pushes a project to a greenlight? What makes it a “go” movie for Mattel?
Well, we’re not a studio. We don’t finance our own movies. So we’re somewhat dependent on the studios that we’ve set the movie up at. So it’ll be a combination. For “Barbie,” we were partnered with Warner Bros. and we happened to get a great script in, and so they basically greenlit it from the onset. We’re so excited about “Hot Wheels,” which we also have at Warner Bros., and Jon M. Chu is going to direct it. We’re collaborating with J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot and that script should come in soon, then hopefully we’re going to be off to the races and prepping that movie. We do have limited development funds, and some we decide to work on internally and get a great script, and then attach elements and then go out with it. At this juncture, we’re not financing our movies. I think it’s something that will be in the cards for us in the future, but that’s not something we’re doing. So that greenlight process depends on a third party.
You’re working with pretty much every studio in town. How does that fit into your overall strategy for Mattel’s film slate?
First of all, every movie should live in a different place, right? So “Barney,” the perfect home for it was A24 and we set it up there, and luckily they embraced it and they love it in the way that we do. I think every movie, when you think about it, has its own sort of natural home, and the great thing is that I came up in the business with all of the people that are sort of at the top of all these studios now. It’s so great to have friends and peers everywhere, and I think it really gives us the ability to be nimble and to be able to not be dependent on one financing source, one release calendar. It just gives us more flexibility in terms of the way we navigate through such a robust slate. To be able to be diversified and to be working in all sorts of places just gives us an opportunity to really move things down the field simultaneously. I think it’s a great way to do it, because some people do certain things better than others.
There’s also no unifying universe. “Barbie” and “Masters of the Universe” don’t have to connect or be in the same style or tone, which feels smart as audiences now seem to have cinematic universe fatigue.
No, I think each property should exist and live on its own. I mean, will there be interconnectivity at some point in the future? Who knows? Would it be fun to make a movie with all of our different brands, like a “Toy Story”-type movie? Absolutely. But we’re not there at this point, I think right now we’re just trying to tell the best possible stories we can to make premium content with the best filmmakers, best in class writers, and just tell exciting stories that bring people joy and warmth, that are family-oriented and that can exist theatrically.
Granular question. I’m excited for “Matchbox” directed by Sam Hargrave, but you also have “Hot Wheels” directed by Jon M. Chu. How do you differentiate between the two?
They’re actually really different. I think with “Hot Wheels,” it’s sort of like a fantastical universe, because you have those amazing orange tracks that go off into nowhere, and it’s really a fantasy play. “Matchbox” is much more grounded, like you have the helicopter driver and the ambulance driver and the policeman. It’s a completely different play pattern. But the “Matchbox” movie, wow. Sam Hargrave is the real deal. He is amazing. He did such a fantastic job. I mean, the stunts in this movie are crazy. I was in Morocco and there were 700 or 800 people working just on one stunt that we were doing. They were driving this car, flipping it over, having it hit 10 cars. And he does these real in-camera. He likes the actors to participate as much as humanly possible.
As you alluded to, it’s a challenging marketplace. “Barbie” was massive. But superhero movies have hit a bit of a ceiling. As you’re plotting out your slate, what makes a Mattel movie stand out? What levers are you pulling to set the films up for success?
I think it all comes back to the filmmaker. It’s finding filmmakers that have a unique and individual voice that sets them apart from anybody else. So that’s the first thing that I’m going to gravitate towards for our movies, is finding interesting voices, and then it’s just finding the most unique way into these stories. Nobody wants to see something that they’ve seen before. They want to feel like it’s unexpected and that it feels different, and that it’s an interesting, different interpretation of what they ever imagined that could be. I think that you’re going to see that in all of our movies. I think that’s the throughline. That’s what we’re aiming for. If you’re not doing something great, then let’s not bother doing it. Movies are very, very hard to make and hard to do well. There’s so many things that need to be aligned and to go right. But I think if you start with a solid foundation of that great story and then you have the vision, then you’re setting yourself up for great success.
You recently got promoted to oversee all of film and television. What’s your approach with the TV slate?
It’s such an exciting time at Mattel Studios just to have television and film under one umbrella, because content is content. Whether it’s short form or long form, it’s just about telling great stories. So it doesn’t matter if it’s gonna be on Peacock or Netflix, or whether we’re going to go consume it at the movie theater. Let’s approach it in the same way. Premium storytelling, great filmmakers, great stories. We just hired Jennifer Breslow who’s running scripted and unscripted TV. She’s fantastic. In the next couple of months, we will be announcing certain shows that we’re putting together with A-list writers and A-list talent at different studios around town for scripted television. Our unscripted business is great. We’re doing lots of fun reality and game shows, and then we have a lot going on on the animation side.
So “Masters of the Universe” is next, and I assume “Matchbox” is after that. Do you know what’s next in the pipeline for film? What’s coming up right behind that?
I’ve got some pots on the stove that are boiling right now, and I have to see which one’s gonna happen. We’ll have one or two that will be going next year that we’re kind of figuring out now.
Rapid fire round of questions here. Is “Barney” a thriller or a horror movie?
No, no, God no. It’s a beautiful, life-affirming, incredible story. It’s just unexpected and delicious in every way.
“Barbie” sequel. Have there been discussions? Is that happening? Are Greta and Noah working on something?
We all want to make the “Barbie” sequel. When you have such great success, we certainly talk about it. At some point maybe. I don’t know, we will see. There have definitely been discussions.
Ryan Gosling Ken movie?
We would love a Ken movie. We love Ryan.
What can you say about the “American Girl” movie?
The idea is so good and so unexpected. It’s set up at Paramount and it’s gonna be really good.
“Bob the Builder,” which is your first animated theatrical film.
Yes, with Anthony Ramos as Bob. He’s super passionate about it. We’re getting a script in and developing that, and that’s coming along really well.
“Monster High,” what’s going on with that?
Gerard [Johnstone] is directing that, I absolutely love him. He has an unbelievable take. We’re fast-tracking it. We should be getting a script and hopefully we’re making that movie soon.
Is Tom Hanks still attached to “Major Matt Mason?”
Yes, it’s in the works. I love that script. I think it’s so beautiful. Hopefully we’re going to make that. Tom’s just a busy guy and has a busy schedule.
