Hasbro is taking its toys and going home—or, at least, refusing to continue paying the partial costs to make movies based on them. Inspired, presumably, by lackluster box office returns on critically well-regarded but financially iffy movies like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Transformers One, the toy giant has stated that it’s not going to be in the business of making movies anymore. (This, after a pretty major push into the film-making space in recent years.) If someone comes along and wants to license one of their brands for a film—as with the existing live-action Transformers movies—they’re perfectly welcome to pay for the privilege, per a new report in Bloomberg focused on CEO Chris Cocks, but the company’s not going to be making its own movies anymore.
This is at least a little ironic, in so far as last year was the first time in the history of film that a toy-based movie was also the biggest film on the planet—and we can’t help but imagine Hasbro execs grumbling a bit over just how successful Barbie ended up being—but Cocks is a games guy (he came up through Microsoft, and worked as head of Magic and D&D company Wizards Of The Coast before taking over the wider company), and is apparently dedicated to putting the company’s focus in that interactive arena. (Including, reportedly, a new push into making video games, because certainly no one has ever lost a ton of money by embarking into a medium where even mid-budget titles are ludicrously expensive, with very questionable chances of producing a good return on investment.)
The upshot for us, personally, is that we’re probably never getting that Honor Among Thieves sequel we were hoping for; the 2023 film demonstrated that you really could find a fun, new angle on classic Dungeon & Dragons tropes that didn’t talk down to the audience or just feel like a laundry list of Easter eggs. But apparently, that wasn’t good enough for the market.
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