Hasbro No Longer Financing Movies

[Leave a Whisper]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-20/hasbro-s-gamer-ceo-refocuses-on-play-after-selling-film-business?leadSource=uverify%20wall

While I can honestly say I'm not surprised or sorry if it goes, I don't think moving to games is such a hot idea either.

[BlackCurtains]

I can't read the article but does this mean there won't be any more MLP movies?

To be honest, the G5 MLP game looks pretty cute. I have it on my Epic wish list and hope to snag it on sale one day.

[Leave a Whisper]

Hasbro Inc. Chief Executive Officer Chris Cocks couldn’t hide his disappointment when he opened two packs of his company’s Magic: The Gathering playing cards at a board-game cafė in New York.

Cocks likes to play from a red deck, whose aggressive cards can quickly deliver creatures and spells to batter an opponent. Instead, he got the more contemplative blue cards that would require him to patiently build a strategy to deplete his rival’s health and win the game. He resolutely shuffled and drew his first hand.

A gamer at heart, Cocks was tapped to run what was then the largest US toymaker in 2022 after the death of his predecessor Brian Goldner. Hasbro, like other toy companies, was enjoying a surge in sales with parents buying gifts for kids stuck at home during the pandemic.

But the boom began to fade once kids returned to school and other activities. Sales in the company’s consumer products division, which includes classic toys like GI Joe action figures and Play-Doh modeling clay, are expected to fall for the third straight year. Analysts are forecasting only modest growth in 2025. Hasbro has laid off over 1,000 workers and is considering a move to Boston from its longtime home in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, movies Hasbro co-financed, including the recent Transformers One and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, received critical praise but underperformed at the box office. Last year, the company sold off most of its film and TV business, and longtime rival Mattel Inc. passed the company in annual sales.

While studios such as Sony Group Corp. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. will continue to make movies based on the company’s products, Hasbro itself won’t co-finance the films. It’s part of a larger strategy to invest more in video and other games, which are popular with kids and adults, and have been taking a greater share of consumers’ leisure time.

“We want to reach fans where they want to play, and increasingly that is through digital expressions of their favorite brands,” Cocks said.

The Microsoft Corp. veteran joined Hasbro in 2016 as president of the company’s Wizards of the Coast division, which makes Magic and the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Sales at that unit nearly doubled to $1.4 billion between 2019 and 2023 as Cocks introduced new card packs for Magic and an online version called Magic the Gathering Arena.

A licensing deal for the hit title Monopoly Go is expected to bring in $105 million in revenue this year, while another for Baldur’s Gate 3 garnered $90 million in its first six months.

Hasbro wants to make more games itself. The company has already invested $1 billion in developing video games. Cocks said he’s earmarked $100 million to $150 million a year for future projects, including a new science-fiction adventure game, Exodus, headed by veterans from Baldur’s Gate developer BioWare.

Hasbro is also working on a new Dungeons & Dragons video game that hasn’t been previously announced, Cocks said, and an action-adventure game based on GI Joe that is currently in pre-production. The company aims to release one to two video games a year by 2026.

Video games aren’t a surefire way to counter the drag in toys and movies. In 2023, Wizards of the Coast canceled at least five video games amid a post-pandemic contraction in that industry. More than 11,500 video game workers have lost their jobs so far this year. Some analysts predict the market will rebound in 2025, but still won’t hit the Covid-fueled high of 2021.

“Video games are very, very, very, I cannot emphasize this enough, competitive,” said Arpine Kocharyan, a UBS Securities analyst. “The only way to win is to have these strong brands that would withstand the test of time, but also, strong execution. When you marry those you get success like Monopoly Go or Baldur’s Gate.”

Hasbro is looking to invest more in its Magic’s video-game format. Sales of the fantasy card game have grown each of the last six years, and in 2022 crossed $1 billion in revenue. But Cocks said Magic Arena, while popular, doesn’t harness Magic’s two biggest growth areas: collectability and its Commander format, which involves more players and cards.

Currently, Hasbro is testing a video game version of Commander, which would potentially be separate from Arena and allow for more than two players to compete. Hasbro is also looking to make the digital versions of its cards more collectible, like the popular game Marvel Snap.

Magic is adding characters from Lord of the Rings and Marvel Comics into its fantasy game setting, provoking mixed reactions from fans who say Hasbro is diluting Magic’s vibe. Still, Magic’s Lord of the Rings cards were its second such series to surpass $200 million in lifetime revenue and were the game’s fastest and top selling. Hasbro hopes these sets will bring in new and lapsed players. A Spider-Man-inspired collection is coming in 2025.

“Think of Magic as a canvas,” Ken Troop, the global play leader for the title, said in an interview last month at Hasbro’s New York office. “Magic IP is one of the things we can put on that canvas, but we can put other things on it.”

Back in the Manhattan cafė, Cocks pulled ahead in the Magic game. He held one card close to his chest, teasing that it could make all the difference in the game. Once his victory was sure, he revealed it: a useless gray card.

“What makes Magic so successful is what will drive Hasbro’s future success,” Cocks said with a bit of a cackle in his voice. “It’s grounded in play.”

--With assistance from Thomas Buckley.

[BlackCurtains]

Thanks. Huh.

I guess I don't have an opinion

[brightberry]

I really liked Transformers One and was looking forward to a part 2. 

[Flitter]

Rely solely on licensing your legacy IPs, meanwhile languishing said IPs. Ok, we'll see how that works out for you, Hasbro. I honestly think they're so misdirected and behind the curve but I'm just a collector, not a market analyst. I hope for them to give Basic Fun more freedom with MLP and don't abandon the brand because it underperformed due to their poor decisions with G5. They're obviously more concerned with becoming a gaming company that a toy maker.  It will be interesting to see if the G6 rumors are true in the coming year.

[ChocolateStarfire]

Gaming companies are not doing well right now. A lot of new and old game orgs are losing developers, designers, and programmers left and right. If Hasbro gets solely into games, it will sink like the Titanic.

I hope Basic Fun keeps the rights to MLP and gives it new life/a new home. It's a shame what Hasbro's done to their company over the years, with marketing issues, not connecting to the kids/adults, and now this article?

They're going the route of SEGA in the 00s--throwing everything at the walls to keep afloat, and I think they know things are dire at this point.   The Dreamcast was a great console, the games were considered awesome and sold a ton, but even so, there just wasn't a market for it...it couldn't compete with the sales of PS2 and Gamecube, then XBox. Same thing with this situation...Magic and other card/board games are not meant to be computer games, and not meant to be an add-on IP. Blizzard tried that with Hearthstone and that is never even mentioned anymore.

How do they plan on marketing this? Who is this for?? That seems to be the issue a lot of companies are facing right now too. I'm looking at you, Jaguar rebrand. 

Magic fans are not happy with the add-on IPs. The IPs they're reaching for--why LOTR? They had their own TCG in the 00s! Spider-Man? What? That's old hat at this point. 

I thought their new Transformers movie was a reset point--I guess not. It might be a prelude to a swan song.

Hasbro needs to go back to basics, to their roots. Orgs in toys and games that are doing that right now are faring better than attempting something new right now. The IPs that sell are those which hinge on nostalgia. But hey, I'm just a consumer that sees the way MLP has been botched with G5 and its abysmal toy quality and think sure, go ahead. Go for the bright and shiny video game draw, it won't last...this game has been played before by many companies. (:

[DreamvalleyMLP]

Sounds to me like more proof that Hasbro is an aimless ship, just bobbing around and constantly adjusting sails in hopes of catching a strong enough wind to propell them back on course.

[Taffeta]

I think Hasbro have been very reactive in recent years. They were reactive to how bronies dealt with G4, and thus abandoned the true market to go after that one (we can debate if that was a good idea or not). Whether you think the G4 approach was right or wrong, the long term strategy seems to have been wrong on several levels and has made them focus on all the wrong things, pony-wise.

Fortunately they let BF license G1 pony releases and it's interesting how Hasbro did make a thing of continuing G1 licensed products in 2025, so I imagine that kind of stuff will continue (legacy brand licences for retro merch).

With the bigger picture, Magic, etc - if I was a MTG fan this is where I would leave completely, because it's not Monopoly, where any theme can fit if you work it right. I mean, the sheer number of monopoly versions now is ridiculous, but there have always been regional versions of Monopoly and so variations on that theme doesn't seem a big deal. MTG is not the same kind of game. Even if there is some NOW popularity for the themed cards, the real money is in the core base, surely? The people who have been/will spend money on MTG when the fad is over.

...So here we go back to G4. Following the fad led to failure with G5 overall. MTG could easily tilt the same way.