Hey folks. Welcome to Edition 99.

This week’s Spotlight: Why the IP-to-Film bet is getting bigger, and harder, to win

From Funko's new content deal to Hot Wheels and Labubu, the pipeline from beloved IP to blockbuster has never been fuller. We look at what the latest wave of toy-and-collectible adaptations gets right, what they're risking, and the one question every studio needs to answer before they greenlight anything.

Plus Speed Reads of:

Let’s dive into it ⤵️

Barbie made $1.4 billion globally in 2023 and fundamentally shifted something in Hollywood.

Not because it was a toy movie (those have been around!), but because it proved that a doll with a 60-year cultural history could be transformed into a genuine mass moment, one that transcended demographics, sparked a thousand op-eds, and turned a Saturday afternoon at the cinema into a must-do social event.

Since then, everybody has been chasing it.

Funko just signed a major deal with Rideback (the studio behind The LEGO Movie franchise and Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender) and AI-enabled production company Spuree to develop film, TV and animated content across its entire portfolio. Hot Wheels has Jon M. Chu (Wicked) at the wheel. Labubu is in development at Sony with Paul King (Paddington, Wonka) directing.

The toy aisle has never been so ambitious, but what does it actually take to turn a beloved piece of IP into a film that succeeds both with audiences and at the box office?

It's worth remembering what made Barbie work, because it wasn't just the IP.

Greta Gerwig brought a specific creative vision, and Margot Robbie — one of the world’s most recognisable stars — brought a nuanced performance. The marketing campaign turned the whole thing into a cultural conversation that even people who didn't watch it couldn't avoid. All of this was built on an IP that generations of people had grown up with, argued about, projected onto, and had genuine feelings for.

That last part is critical. Barbie didn't work because it was a recognisable brand. It worked because it had a deep fandom. The kind that's built over decades of real engagement, debate, and personal connection.

Speaking at SEG3 London 2025, Mattel’s Ruth Herniquez discussed how the company has driven innovation for the Barbie brand over the past decade, and why any change needs to be purpose-led and with the consumer in mind.

Similarly, A Minecraft Movie arrived for an audience that had collectively spent billions of hours inside the game's world, people with existing emotional investments long before a cinema ticket was involved.

The lesson? The IP is just the starting point. What matters is whether the fandom around it is real, whether people have actually lived inside it.

Not all IP is created equal when it comes to what it can sustain on screen. There's a useful way to think about it.

The most successful ones tick multiple boxes.

Hot Wheels, for instance, is nostalgic and cultural. It generated $1.58 billion in global sales in 2024, has a Netflix series now in its third season, and sits firmly in the childhood memory of most millennials and older Gen Z. The creative challenge Jon M. Chu faces isn't awareness. It's giving people who already love it a reason to see it differently.

→ Food for thought: When working with high-awareness IP, the creative brief isn't "how do we introduce this?”, it's "how do we surprise people who already know everything about it?" The fandom gives you a headstart, but not a guaranteed audience.

Of all the IP-to-screen announcements recently, Funko's deal with Rideback and Spuree is perhaps the least obviously cinematic.

Unlike the others, Funko doesn't have its own characters or worlds in the traditional sense. Its identity is built on being a bridge between fans and existing IP. Funko is a collectable layer on top of existing fandoms. Its catalogue covers everything from Disney to WBD to Netflix, and sits at what CEO Josh Simon calls "the centre of fan culture."

That's both the opportunity and the challenge.

The opportunity: Funko has genuine, deep relationships with fans who are already passionate. Those Pop figures aren't just products — they're representations of identity and belonging. The Funko collector community is real, active, and highly engaged.

The challenge: unlike LEGO, which had its own mythology and aesthetic to build into The LEGO Movie, Funko's identity is relational rather than standalone. Its story is about the intersection of fandom, collecting, and culture. This is rich territory, but harder to dramatise than a race car or a talking Barbie.

→ Ask yourself: What your IP means to the people who love it — not just what it is. The answer to that question is your film. Funko means community, obsession, and the joy of belonging to something. That's a movie.

The Pop Mart plush sold more than 100 million units in 2025 alone. The hype is real, but it's also new.

As a director, King’s record with Paddington is about as good as it gets for this kind of transformative material. He understands how to find genuine emotional resonance inside something that could easily become saccharine, and how to make non-human characters feel relatable.

But Labubu is a trend. And trends move fast.

The film, even in fast development, is likely years away from screens. The question is whether the cultural moment that makes Labubu feel urgent today will still be intact when the film arrives. 

Japan is already releasing a Labubu competitor: Mirumi. Launched during Milan Fashion Week, the tiny nonhuman bag charm has wide eyes and soft pink fur. Its marketing slogan is: “A charm that steals your heart.” 

In defence of a Labubu movie, King's involvement suggests the goal isn't to chase the trend but to build something that justifies the IP's existence beyond it. To do for Labubu what Paddington does: find the universal emotional truth inside something specific.

Labubu isn’t the first trend-driven IP to make the jump to cinema. As we covered in Edition 85, Wind Sky Sun Entertainment partnered with Badimo to adapt the popular game Jailbreak into a movie, and Story Kitchen has teamed up with the developers of Grow a Garden to adapt the sensation for the big screen.

But as we said, “Building an evergreen IP takes time, depth and careful worldbuilding - so whilst growth of audience alongside loyalty is imperative for sustainability of any franchise, there are some important questions about what makes something like Grow a Garden or Jailbreak” — or Labubu— “truly adaptable.”

→ Tip: Trend-driven IP needs to earn a more durable emotional foundation quickly, or the film risks arriving to a world that's already moved on. The best IP-to-screen adaptations add something the original format couldn't — depth, stakes, community. If you're building on trend IP, that's your biggest job.

We're in an era of fluid fandom, as we discussed in Edition 92. Audiences move in and out of IP relationships throughout their lives, re-entering when something gives them a good enough reason.

But audiences don’t only want to be reminded of something they used to love. They want to be given something that builds on their existing relationship with an IP rather than asking them to pretend it's still 1995. 

Today, utilising IP for entertainment is less about relying on nostalgia alone, and more about finding the next chapter of an ongoing relationship.

The IP-to-film pipeline is only getting more crowded. Studios are under pressure to reduce risk, and recognisable brands feel like a safer bet than original ideas. But the last few years have shown clearly that IP awareness is not the same as IP with active fandom. In particular, Gen Z, who now decide which cultural bets actually win, are good at spotting the difference.

Funko's move is interesting because it comes from a brand that knows fandom deeply, arguably better than most, and is choosing to lean into that as a creative foundation rather than just a commercial one. Hot Wheels has the creative talent to do something genuinely surprising with a universally loved product. And Labubu has a director who might just be good enough to turn a plush toy into something that makes you cry.

The brands that will be successful will be the ones that ask not "how do we monetise this audience?" but "what does this audience actually need from this story, right now?"

If you’re interested in how IP can be adapted for the big screen, or how those deals are made, explore the two-day program for SEG3 London 2026 below, where we’ll be unpacking the strategies behind the biggest hits.

Disney and Formula 1 have announced an expanded collaboration for the 2026 season, covering immersive experiences, original WEBTOON content, new branded products and more.

This is two behemoths in sports & entertainment crossing over - both global, both huge fanbases, both recognisable IP - so what do they need from each other that they don’t have already?

For F1, arguably the most interesting is the new webtoon episodic. It gives them mobile-first storytelling, keeps them visible between race weekends, and allows them to build a wider story beyond just the drivers and team principals (which of course the new season of Drive to Survive will do!).

For Disney, it’s about cultural relevance. Many of their IPs have been around decades, so finding new storylines and adventures requires creativity - and so with F1, they have new content to share, a chance to deliver entertainment experiences in various markets, and new race/city-specific products - all of which can shifts their IPs back into the active fandom bucket rather than nostalgic.

The new effectiveness study looks at how short-form and long-form advertising actually perform together.

Whilst short-form is a key part of the discovery puzzle - the report shows that if it is also built to entertain, it can help to strengthen the brand, with close to a 40% memory lift and double the lift in awareness.

That being said, the bulk of profit still comes from long-term brand effects - so finding that balance between long-form setting the story, and short-form keeping it in circulation and conversation, will be the difference between a short-term spike in attention and sales, vs long-term brand equity and sustainability.

Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!

That’s all for now, everyone - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report. If you found it of interest, please do consider sharing with a colleague or friend who’d enjoy it too!