Robbie Brenner (Mattel Films President & Producer) on Audience Testing of "Barbie" Movie & More!

Kevin, thank you so much for having me. It is such an honor to be here and to sit here with you and to watch you do your thing.

Well, from when I was a little girl growing up in New York City, my father used to take me to this shoe store called True Tread. It was on 83rd and 3rd Avenue on the corner, and it was a very, very popular shoe store.

I lived on the Upper East Side, where I live on 81st between First and York. 82nd and York.

I went to this shoe store, and my dad was so funny. He would write down, you know, there would be a list where you'd put your name and they would call it, like a clipboard when it was your time to get fitted for shoes. So my dad, he thought it was very funny, but he wrote 'Duck' instead of like 'Robbie.' So they were like, 'Duck? Mr. Duck?' Anyway, I was off watching these movies. There were these sort of old-school View-Masters that you could look into, and they would have just many, many images. And when you would crank it, it would move together and it would become a movie. So I would sit there and watch the movies. I just loved movies. I loved images. I loved storytelling from a very, very, very young age. My father and I used to develop photography in the bathroom. We would go into the bathroom and take all the equipment and the developer and the enlarger and...

Well, I feel like I've learned actually so much from you. I feel like in all of the testing of all the movies that we've done and listening to you speak about it, telling me, 'You know, Robbie, these movies need to have a reason to exist. Why are you making this movie?' You would always say, 'Is the movie sticky? Is it sticky?' And I find myself saying that a lot to people, you know, because the movies that really work, whether it's 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' whether it's 'Into the Spider-Verse,' whether it's 'Barbie'... I mean, look at 'Barbie.' It's sort of the perfect intersection of art and commerce because it is really truly a personal story of a woman who had a very intimate and personal experience with Barbie that did something that is authentic and bold and is not afraid of speaking her mind and saying the things that she wants to say and doing the things... It has such a singular, strong point of view. And I think the movies that really work, especially in 2023 where there's so much in the world, there's so much noise, there's so much television, there's social media, there's gaming, there's so many distractions, are movies that feel, as you would say, sticky and singular and different. And those are the movies that drive people to the box office, that people want to see. There's no question about it. If you look at every successful movie, even if there's a familiarity about it, there's something in that movie that is different enough or emotionally resonant or some kind of connection that transcends all those other ones like it. Or in the case of 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' something we've never seen in that sort of multiverse.

August 2018.

Well, the truth is that before Greta came on board, Tom and I, Tom Ackerley who's married to Margot, they have a company together, LuckyChap. We went down a path and we probably met with 30 different writers and we heard 30 different Barbie takes. Nothing that really stuck out. They were like little kernels of like, 'Oh, that's interesting.' Major writers, right? Major writers, major directors. There was no shortage of people that were interested in sort of trying to unlock this Barbie movie. But it was sort of just like the generic, like, 'Okay, Barbie lives in Malibu, she's got her dream boat Ken.' It would all just felt like very familiar and you had seen it before. And then actually Margot, who had a relationship with Greta, she came up with the idea of Greta. She said, 'You know what about Greta?' Did Margot do that?

Margot did. And I was like, 'Uh, fantastic.' I mean, obviously, why would you think fantastic? Like, what would prompt you to think that Greta Gerwig, who did a huge independent 'Lady Bird' and then she did 'Little Women,' which was commercial and made a lot of money, but certainly was not anything in the realm of the Barbie... Early Barbie, how did you think that that was a great idea?

So she said, 'By the way, Noah Baumbach is her partner. They have two children together.' And she had one during the screening process, she did. And she said, 'I want Noah to write this movie with me. I want to write it with him.' And so Margot, Tom, and I went to New York and we met with Noah and Greta in, I think it was Noah's mother's brownstone. I want to say he might have been cutting 'Marriage Story,' maybe it was the movie before, I don't know. But he was busy. And so we all sat together and we sort of talked about it very... Who was with you?

And we talked about sort of, you know, very loosely ideas like what is this, what should it feel like, what does it look like. And it was very, they were very, very kind of broad ideas. And I know that, but were they different than those other ideas that the 30 prior writers had pitched? Like, was there a different vibe in the room?

Yeah, no, I do. I remember that conversation.

So they said, 'Okay, well, we're going to deal with Warner Bros.' And so we went back to LA and, you know, of course it takes just months and months and months. And so that went on for a very...

So I had, we had nothing to do with Sony. When I started at Mattel, we had gotten the rights back from Sony. And Ynon decided that we were going to start free and clear with all of the IPs. That we weren't going to bother with anything that had existed before. That this was sort of our vision of what we wanted to do for Mattel Films, and we just started from the beginning. And so we set the IP, that Barbie and actually Hot Wheels as well, up at Warner Bros. They were passionate about it. We think... Who was the... Courtney Valenti was the president of Warner Bros. at the time, and Toby Emmerich. So Toby and Courtney actually bought the, or said, 'We want to be involved.' Or had it?

So you guys didn't pay for the movie. Warner Bros. did.

Got it. And so that is an arrangement that you're going to continue to make? Are you sort of reassessing now that you've had such great success?

I feel like I've got to turn my... Very nervous, because how do you hit home runs? People, we know it's impossible. So we'll just say that. But everything you touch is quality, so I've no doubt that you're going to be successful. But this is zeitgeist stuff. This is lightning in a bottle stuff. I mean, Josh Goldstine, I've praised him so many times on this program and outside of this program, of creating a buzz in a marketing campaign that was so compelling and so in sync with what you all made creatively. All right, the movie gets made, and now we go to the screening process. And that was a real interesting process. So the first screening we did was actually a blind screening. We decided...

Nobody knew what they were coming to see. That's what a blind recruit is, right? We just give the audience similar kinds of movies so we know we're not getting like the wrong people that would never see the movie, right? But you know, we were nervous. We were nervous about spoilers and people exposing Barbie and people knowing it was Barbie. There's so much hype on the movie from the first time that those first two photos were released from Venice Beach of Margot and Ryan, it like basically shut down the internet. So we were very nervous about people knowing that it was going to be Barbie. So we did, you know, you remember the blind recruit in Arizona, which was interesting to show a movie there, especially.

I mean, I always say that the movie that you see in the theater is very similar to the movie that was on the page. I mean, yes, we cut things out of the movie because we couldn't afford it budget-wise, or things shape-shifted. There were two narrators at one point, and that ultimately there was just one. But the, as you would always say, Kevin, the DNA of the movie was the DNA of the movie. And the trajectory of the scenes and the way that it all played out, starting in 2001, that was always at the beginning, going to Barbie Land, coming the way she comes down, Weird Barbie coming down. So it was a calibration issue, really. It was about calibrating.

Yeah, I think it was just like a modulation of things. Greta listened really well. Like, I thought she listened to the audience well. She loves information. I think every time she's so close to it, first of all she wrote it, she directed it, she lived it. I remember very clearly she stuck to her guns. She knew what she wanted, but she also listened. And I think the great filmmakers that I've worked with have the ability to respond to the research but keep their vision at the front and center.

Yes, it was.

Oh, in New Jersey. Yeah, it was in New Jersey. I rode in the car with you home. We went to the Jean-Georges restaurant. Oh my gosh, yes. Yes, it was amazing. Because this was not a blind recruit. And when I arrived at the theater, there was a sea of people in pink wrapped around two blocks out. And I was like, 'Wow, oh my god.' I've done screenings obviously since Barbie's opening, and I have a litany of screenings of Barbie photos to send to you that I've never sent you of theaters around the country of people in pink, straight men in wigs, Ken wigs.

That was really Greta. Greta was like, 'Ken is Ryan. It's Ryan. I'm it's Ryan.' And you know, she went after him. And look, who does not want to be in a Greta Gerwig movie? I mean, like she literally every person she approached was like, 'Sign me up.'

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. So the next screening we did, the scores like jump phenomenally. And I love to think of it as again Greta finding the center of the movie, having heard the audience, and now it is playing in that stratosphere. That America Ferrera speech, you know, when we were in New Jersey, they were screaming and clapping and people were just going crazy. It's very seldom, I mean, you know, you sit in so many screenings, I've sat in a fair share of them, but they're very, very few movies. Not even 'Dallas Buyers Club,' which scored probably in the 70s, like people were kind of like, 'Oh, okay.' But Barbie is just like happy. It's like pink. And I think that, I think the other thing is like where we're sitting in the world, like post-COVID, and you know, with streaming and people being able to sit in their homes and watch everything and everything is so available, I think people were just starved to get back to the movie theater. I mean, they were going back to the movie theater. This was something else. Well, this was like, this was going to be like an experience, man. Yeah, it's going to be like 'Rocky Horror Picture Show.' People were dressing up, they're ready to... I haven't, when was the last time? Harry Potter, maybe, or something where you had that kind of, and Star Wars has that kind of, but you were creating a new franchise essentially of a flawed or deeply limited piece of IP that you... It's extraordinary. I mean, again, I'm going a little bit hyperbolic here because I had to eat my hat and crow more than once. But you know what, it could have turned out like horribly. I mean, I would say 99% of the people that probably would have directed this movie would have been terrible. It just could have been, it could have just, you know, as you thought in those capability studies about Barbie, I think Barbie is polarizing. I mean, I think as much as people play with Barbie and love Barbie and identify with Barbie, people, you know, don't like Barbie. And it makes people feel bad about the way they look and their image and I need to be perfect. And I think what Greta and Noah did so brilliantly in this script is that they unpacked all of that. They talked about what it feels to look a certain way or not be perfect, or what if I have cellulite, and what if I don't look like this. And so it really explored all of women and what women deal with and what women deal with in corporate America. I mean, those scenes in the boardroom resonate with people because that's the truth. I mean, that is the world we're living in. As much as women have a place in the world and we've come a long way, it's still that way now, corporately speaking. So Mattel has got to... I mean, I'm sure they've tried to create what you did in a movie for years for the brand itself, but this has genuinely changed it in the most positive way. The monetary value of that property and that image has grown exponentially, correct?

Well, I think that because Mattel was really a character in the movie, I think it's in the zeitgeist now. I think people are like, 'Oh, Mattel.' And it feels... You guys allowed some self-deprecating stuff, which I thought was really smart.

Well, look, I think that they all went on board for the ride because I basically said, 'Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. You are never... You're going to white-knuckle it the whole time for something that you feel like you have ownership over and you have been the ambassador of for 15 or 18 years, you know, watching Barbie evolve in the body types and everything. There are going to be things that you're not going to like.' Like that scene, for instance, where Sasha, the young girl in the movie, basically really gives it to Barbie and calls her a bimbo and tells her she's a fascist. And you know, there's... Who's the one? What's the line that I know is a big controversial line? Um, oh, she goes, 'Hey, you...' She comes down and says that or something. But Greta came up with a great solution for that, right? I know. But you know, it's interesting because at the end, that was... Isay she says, 'You know, this is my Dreamhouse, bitch,' which was so funny and got took the house down. But I know Warner Bros. rightly so was like, 'We can't have that word because that's cross.' And I think, I don't know if Mattel felt that, but I would imagine they did. Like that word might have just been going... That just past the guardrail. But in order to keep the intent of it, you came up with like a bleeping out thing, right?

Well, it's not just Netflix, it's any of them. It's Apple, it's Hulu, it's Amazon, it's all of them. They have to grab an audience. It's a different calibration. It goes the same with advertising materials. You got to grab them at the beginning. And then it used to be a slow burn, right? But not so now. You have to grab them almost a cold opening. Linear television figured that out. They always had that really exciting cold opening to grab you so you'd stay after the commercial break and come back. And I think movies that are going that route have to think about that. So it's a question that I ask in all my focus groups: 'Would any of you have tuned out?' That's an important piece of information. That said, I still believe what you said to be true, or I guess what I had said to be true, which is the ending is the most important aspect. How you leave them, and I want to say how you leave them feeling, and the satisfaction level. And you have to kind of click two boxes: intellectual satisfaction, meaning all your questions are answered or even if it's ambiguous or not answered, they're addressed, and your emotional satisfaction. And 'Barbie' had both, for example. 'Dallas Buyers Club,' as a bummer as the subject matter is, had both. 'Burden' had both. What other movies can you speak of that you're super proud of that were near and dear to your heart? Because I know you understand what I'm saying, and I can even see it in your eyes right now that you get it.

Well, I think 'Call Jane,' which you know I made a few years ago with Elizabeth Banks, has that. I think 'The Fighter,' which I worked on, has that. 'The Fighter,' wow, probably David O. Russell's best film. Yeah, I mean, he's made a couple of really good ones, but that particular one struck a nerve for me. I think so. Look, a true story and Scott Silver is just a fantastic screenwriter and he wrote that script. But the other thing about you is like you know the town so well, so you have great relationships. I don't think, and I'm going to maybe go out on a limb here, I've never heard a negative thing about you. And if anyone were to say anything even questioning your integrity or who you were, I would be suspect of them. By the way, I say the same thing about my father.

It is. Robbie, I think the thing is that I truly love movies. For me, I make movies and I'm a part of them because I have to be. It's something that is in my blood, it's in my skin, and I have to do it. I have to tell stories. I couldn't do another job. I maybe I'd find something that I could do well, but for me... I'm sure you're being offered every job in town right now. I just think movie is the idea that you go and you see something for an hour and a half or two hours and it could sit with you and resonate with you forever, or change the course of your life, or change the way that you look at something. I think movies are so powerful, you know, and they live on. It's just a very, very satisfying... I mean, it can be unsatisfying too. We've worked on movies together that did not succeed, and we've had private conversations where we're like, 'Oh my God, how we gonna fix this? How we gonna get through?' And then ultimately, we have to love those children just as much.

Well, it's in my book. We can talk about it. It's 'Immortals.' And it was beautifully directed by Tarsem. He's a visual genius. But for whatever reason, the trajectory of the driving motor getting into that second to third act was just falling short. And so my suggestion from a research standpoint was, 'Let's bring it up to that point and stop the movie and risk the audience turning on us, but bring them in on this.' And it was a small group, but so effective because the questions were, 'What do you want to happen now? What do you think should happen? What do you want to happen?' And we heard those responses and re-shot, I think, $10 million worth of re-shoot came as a result of that. But the movie was, I think, one of, if not Relativity's most profitable movies. Right at the end of the day, it opened at number one. We completely turned the movie around, and it wound up being a huge success. So Robbie, what's next at Mattel? What are you working on?

So we've announced 14 projects that we're doing at studios. 14. So 'Hot Wheels' and 'Wishbone' and 'Polly Pocket,' that we're doing with Lena Dunham and Lily Collins.

I was having breakfast with her and she was like, 'I just love Polly Pocket. I grew up with Polly Pocket. I'm obsessed with Polly Pocket.' And so I was like, 'Great, let's develop Polly Pocket.' And then I was having lunch with Lily Collins, who I put in 'Mirror Mirror' and you know I've known for forever, she was in Tarsem's movie. And she said, 'Well, I love Polly Pocket.' And so we all sort of joined forces and came up with this idea to do Polly Pocket that Lily would produce alongside us and she would star as Polly Pocket, and Lena would write and direct it. Okay, and 'Hot Wheels' is set up where? 'Hot Wheels' is at Warner Bros. We're producing it alongside J.J. Abrams.

Well, you have to do that. If you're not basically running at something that scares you, like you should not be doing it. I mean, that's where the magic is, I think. So give us another couple of those projects that have some really interesting folks attached.

I would normally say 'Barney, that little dinosaur,' but with Robbie Brenner spearheading this, no pressure, Robbie.

What do you like about capability testing? How do you use it to help you? In other words, the idea of capability testing is, of course, testing concepts larger than just a logline, but maybe two to 300 words and pulling the hyperbole out of the concept and just giving the story elements, the basic story elements, and then sequentially adding in the different elements that you have at the time. You use it really well, and I just want to know why and how and how that affects your decision making, etc. Can you just talk about that for a little bit?

Well, I think it's exactly what we were talking about before, which is like, don't be everything for everyone. Lean into things that feel authentic and singular and bold and different and scary. And that is where the magic happens. I always say to my children, 'Have conviction in what you do. Have conviction. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks or whatever. Go at it with everything you have. And if you fail, fail miserably in it.'

Well, when I first read the script, I actually, you know, I closed my door. It was COVID. It wound up in my inbox after just really sort of having that notion that it was going to be about this high heel and the Birkenstock. So here you can imagine I didn't even know. I just remember getting a script and it said on the front cover, 'I know it's 147 pages, but don't worry, people will speak very, very, very quickly.' So I turned the page and leapt into reading the script. But I remember first of all, I was like talking to myself. I was just like, 'Oh my God, this is unbelievable. This is incredible. This feels so unique. I've never seen anything or felt anything or experienced anything else like I've read.' That's your superpower, girlfriend. I'm sorry, that is your superpower. You see that, and I so respect and admire it. I mean, seriously. Wow. When I put this down, I thought, 'This is 'The Wizard of Oz.' It reminded me of 'The Wizard of Oz' about this woman, this girl, who goes on this journey to understand all of these people and all of these things, and comes back to realize, 'Okay, I'm... After this journey, I'm not the same person anymore.' And there's no place like home, right? Exactly. Robbie Brenner, you are just the greatest. I've always speak so hyperbolically about people that are my guests, and the connective tissue of this program is that I basically have worked with everybody and know everybody. You and I have a very deep connection, and I just think your passion and your intensity and your tenacity and sheer... You will things to happen is so admirable. And all I can say to you is, take you back.

Thank you so much, Kevin. I love you beyond words. I think you are so special and amazing, and I feel so honored that you asked me to be on your show.