This weekend thousands of fans will swarm their local movie theaters to see Barbie’s big-screen debut.
Opening weekend ticket sales for Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, are expected to bring in as much as $150 million opening weekend. That would put it on par with Spider-Man 3, which had the 26th-highest weekend box office debut. Gerwig is also likely to secure the record for the largest opening weekend for a female director (Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman currently holds that title, earning $103.2 million on opening weekend).
But Barbie’s journey from the toy aisle to the big screen wasn’t a sure thing. It involved a massive turnaround at Mattel, the company behind the iconic blonde doll. In just five years, 57-year-old CEO Ynon Kreiz, who became CEO in April 2018, has transformed the company by cutting down on costs and using its intellectual property (IP) heft to open a whole new revenue stream.
“I took our portfolio of iconic franchises in children and family entertainment to be an incredible opportunity to extend the company outside of the toy aisle,” Kreiz told Fortune’s Alan Murray and Michal Lev-Ram last week on the Leadership Next podcast.
Kreiz, a former entertainment executive, joined Mattel at a low point in 2018. Net sales for fiscal year 2017 were $4.88 billion, down 11% from the year before, with an operating loss of more than $342 million. The company was steeped in debt. Cultural issues and bureaucracy also plagued Mattel. Siloed business functions, a drab corporate office, and an archaic toy design center were stifling the company, according to Fortune reporting at the time. A total of four CEOs were appointed between 2012 and 2018, and Kreiz’s predecessor, Google alum Margo Georgiadis, resigned just a little over a year into the job.
Kreiz insists that Mattel’s stuffy, bureaucratic culture of years past is now long gone. “It’s a different company,” he said.
After taking charge in April 2018, Kreiz cut Mattel’s strategy document from a three-inch thick binder to a single page. The company shuttered its New York office in April 2018 and laid off 2,200 workers a few months later as part of a savings program aimed at cutting costs by $650 million by late 2019. In the first three years under Kreiz’s leadership, Mattel achieved cost savings that exceeded a billion dollars in total, and has since cut costs by another $200 million, Kreiz said.
Another key win was gaining back Disney’s coveted Disney Princess and Frozen doll franchises, which the toy maker lost to competitor Hasbro in 2014. Kreiz already had an established relationship with the media conglomerate, and it previously purchased two companies he helmed: Maker Studios in 2014 and Fox Kids Europe in 2001.
“Needless to say, trust played a key role here,” he said of regaining the Disney Princess and Frozen doll licenses. “And Mattel has evolved over those years to become an incredible, incredible platform, both in terms of design and development, with a very strong supply chain that is, we call now, a competitive advantage, and a very large scale commercial platform.”
In addition to running Fox Kids Europe and Maker Studios, Kreiz’s other entertainment industry bona fides include running Endemol, a struggling Dutch-based producer of reality TV including Big Brother, from 2008 to 2011. He restructured the company by bulking up its senior team, moving its commercial operations to London, and expanding its content offerings to sports and scripted TV.
At Mattel, Kreiz launched a movie division, Mattel Films, in 2018. He hired Robbie Brenner, a veteran producer who earned an Oscar Best Picture nomination for producing Dallas Buyers Club that same year. Brenner revived Barbie from “development hell”—industry jargon for when a project gets stuck in early development—after it moved around for years from one movie studio to another. Warner Bros. signed on to produce the movie in Jan. 2019, with Australian actress Margot Robbie set to star. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were recruited to co-write the movie in July 2019, and Gerwig signed on to direct the film in 2021.
Mattel has announced it will produce 13 more films based on its toy brands, including a J.J. Abrams-directed Hot Wheels movie, a Lena Dunham-directed Polly Pocket feature, and a heist movie based on the board game Uno starring rapper Lil Yachty. There are a total of 45 film projects in development, according to a New Yorker profile published in July.
Kreiz is clear-eyed about the company’s IP strengths, calling franchises like Barbie its “currency.”
“Having a healthy toy business allows us to develop and strengthen this emotional relationship we have with our fans,” Kreiz said. “These are fans, this is an audience. And once you realize that and it becomes part of your DNA, it opens up a world of opportunities.”
But he adds that the company is an active participant in movie making. “As the IP owner, we’re not handing over the franchises and walk[ing] off the field…We are actually in the game. We are on the field. We play a key role on the creative side, on the production side, on how these projects evolve.”
While Barbie’s release this weekend marks a victory in Mattel’s turnaround story, Kreiz seems poised for whatever challenge the company will tackle next.
“The work at Mattel is very fulfilling and always fun,” Kreiz said. “Yes, it’s challenging and it never ends, but it’s not a job where…I need to come home and unwind. I relish the challenge and the excitement that this company creates.”
