From Barbie to Hot Wheels: Mattel Is Going to the Movies

• Mattel is making movies about its intellectual properties, Hot Wheels and Barbie.

• Not much has been released about either, but we know Barbie will drive a first-generation Chevrolet Corvette.

• The Hot Wheels-themed movie is reportedly being produced by Warner Bros. and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company, but no other details regarding the plot or cast have been released.

Mattel used to just make Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls. It still makes those, but now it is making movies about them, and two of the biggest potential coming hits include cars.

Let’s start off with Margot Robbie in Barbie. Why that one? Because in the movie, Barbie drives a Corvette! The bendable plastic figurine-brought-to-life will pilot her trademark first-generation C1 convertible, in pink, of course, as you can see in the photo.

Exactly which model year Corvette isn’t clear, at least from the photo, and that’s about all we have to go on so far, as neither Mattel nor anyone else has made many comments on it.

We do know that Chevrolet built 69,015 of the first-gen Corvettes from 1953 to 1962, going from a 150-hp straight-six all the way to a fuel-injected small block 327 that made 360 hp in the C1’s final year. Barbie the doll was created in 1959, so maybe she will drive a later model C1, maybe even a small block 327. If so, lucky her.

The movie might actually be fun, too, not like what you might expect. It’s being made by Robbie’s production company, LuckyChap Partners, which also made the dark comedy I, Tonya, about the tragi-comic figure skater Tonya Harding. So expect some substance in the cinema.

“We like the things that feel a little left of center,” Robbie told The Hollywood Reporter. “Something like ‘Barbie’ where the IP (intellectual property), the name itself, people immediately have an idea of, ‘Oh, Margot is playing Barbie, I know what that is,’ but our goal is to be like, ‘Whatever you’re thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different—the thing you didn’t know you wanted.”

And it will involve a Corvette. Look for that movie to come out July 21, 2023.