Mattel stock rises on the 'Barbie' movie's successful box office premiere

Shares of toymaker Mattel move higher on the overwhelming success of the "Barbie" movie's box office premiere. Yahoo Finance Entertainment Reporter Alexandra Canal joins the Live show to weigh in on moviegoer chatter leading up to the movie's debut, the film's execution, and its cultural impact for the remainder of 2023.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Mattel stock is on the up this morning after "Barbie" took the top spot at the North American box office in its opening weekend. It also broke the record for first weekend box office take for a film directed by a woman. In this case, of course Greta Gerwig.

"Yahoo Finance's" Alexandra Canal is here with the numbers, the details, her review. She's got it all.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Got it all.

JULIE HYMAN: What do you got for us?

ALEXANDRA CANAL: I was one of many patrons to go see "Barbie" over the weekend

JULIE HYMAN: Including us.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: I know you guys did too. So I'm looking forward to discussing what we think. But "Barbie", yes, a really strong performance. It was backed by both Mattel, Warner Brothers, Discovery. Both of those stocks are on the move this morning. "Barbie" nabbed a collective $235 million plus at the box office, when you couple that with "Oppenheimer", which is a film from Universal.

And, overall, this was the fourth strongest weekend that we've ever seen in box office history. And it comes at a very critical time when there's a lot going on in the industry. We have those strikes looming. Moody said that theater chains will be hit first the longer this strike continues. So the fact that we had a really strong performance like this is certainly encouraging heading into the fall, when we're not going to see as many blockbusters or as many talked about movies like "Barbie" has.

The marketing here was just insane heading into this weekend.

BRAD SMITH: It, absolutely, was. There were a few-- and we have all seen this. I saw it yesterday, actually. And walked out of the theater just in awe, but also had these takeaways as I thought about it more this morning. One, "Barbie" core wearing moviegoers, they can have the potential to bump some of those retail sales numbers as well from the fashion and the number of people, yourself, myself, I guess, included.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: The Kenough shirt, that apparently is already available.

BRAD SMITH: I know.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: You can buy it.

BRAD SMITH: We were looking at it right before the show started. Yes. Also Mattel, this is probably a one-and-done type of box office moment for them. I can't imagine "How Wheels" doing the same type of numbers that "Barbie" did at the box office. And "Hot Wheels" is rumored to be in production and be coming out in like, 2025, as well here.

JULIE HYMAN: The marriage of "Barbie" and Greta Gerwig, it does seem difficult that that is replicable with other artistic projects. That this was, at the same time, a commercial and an artistic endeavor.

It's a little bit difficult to thread that needle. And the movie did it relatively successfully. We're going to talk with Rick Newman about that a little bit later on. But it's been percolating through my brain as well. I read too much about it going into it. And my expectations were probably too high.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: But, overall, I did like it. I feel like, overall, it tried to do a little too much. As I keep thinking through it, there were amazing moments throughout the film. The theme throughout the film was amazing. But I also think it was a very noisy movie. There was just a lot.

It seems like the idea was, if you had an idea, you put it in the movie. And some of the ideas were spectacular. But at the end of the day, I don't know. It was a little bit noisy.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: I agree with that, Julie. I do think there were moments where it was a little too cheesy for me, considering the messaging was so strong. And then spoiler alert, but the Ken dancing musical--

JULIE HYMAN: That was my favorite.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: I feel like for me, I would have been fine. I loved the song.

JULIE HYMAN: It had nothing to do with anything.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: It had nothing to do with anything.

JULIE HYMAN: But it was amazing.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: And just to see Ryan Gosling sing, I think he did such a great job. He was Ken to me. And he's such a big movie star. That for a movie star to be able to embody a completely different character like that, I think takes a lot of skill. So I truly enjoyed it. It was entertaining. It was cute. It was fun, silly, at times. I agree with you that there was a lot happening all at once.

But the overarching message, I really thought resonated with me.

BRAD SMITH: "Barbie" as an economic indicator or perhaps a consumer indicator by the time we go into Halloween here. And yeah, we're going to bring them back to the figures for the consumer here too. Is this for investors-- now, as we think about it, is this something that they can continue to ride the wave of? Because if you're going into Halloween and saying, all right, all these people purchased pink. They've got to wear it again. And there's going to be so many--

JULIE HYMAN: And maybe buy more stuff from Mattel.

BRAD SMITH: --iterations. Buy more stuff.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: There's going to be Barbie and Ken's all over for Halloween.

BRAD SMITH: And then the holidays.

JULIE HYMAN: Forget about it from the adult perspective. Forgive me, Brad.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah.

JULIE HYMAN: But Christmas comes after Halloween. And you can't help but think that there's going to be a bump in "Barbie" sales of the actual doll, as a result of--

ALEXANDRA CANAL: 100%. Yeah. That'll be really interesting to track through the holiday season to see how big of a windfall this is, not just for the box office, but really for Mattel. And we do know that there's going to be other types of movies coming based on their toys.

I love the outfits, how they recreated and pointed to the outfits in the movie. I'm sure Rick will talk about this too. It really was a giant commercial.

JULIE HYMAN: As we're talking about the kids, one more point, this is not really a movie for little kids. I did see some smaller children in the theater. And some of it is a little sophisticated for them. And some will go right over their heads. Just for--

ALEXANDRA CANAL: PG-13.

JULIE HYMAN: --parents' FYI.

BRAD SMITH: Maybe Allan and Midge get a sequel. Who knows.

JULIE HYMAN: Allan, that was--

ALEXANDRA CANAL: I know. That was perfect. He's just Ken's buddy at the end of the day.