Labubu toys, the grinning fuzzy trinkets that became a global sensation last year, are going to be the stars of a Hollywood movie, joining a growing list of beloved characters to jump from store shelves to the big screen. (Hi, Barbie!)
Sony and the Chinese retailer Pop Mart, which exclusively sells the dolls, announced on Thursday that they were developing a Labubu feature film. Paul King, the British screenwriter and director behind “Paddington” and “Wonka,” will produce and direct the film, according to a statement from the companies. Steven Levenson, who wrote the book for the musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” will write the screenplay.
The announcement offered few details and did not give a release date. But the film will become the latest to turn beloved toys into the stars of a major movie, along with Barbie, Lego, the Transformers and others.
The close link between movies and merchandising is often traced back to the immense success of the original “Star Wars” trilogy in the late 1970s and early ’80s, intellectual property experts said.
“It took seriously the idea of your intellectual property being commercialized on quite a few different channels,” Emily Hudson, a professor of law at the University of Oxford, said of “Star Wars.”
But whereas “Star Wars” started as a movie and became a major merchandising success, that model has been inverted lately.
“Now you come up first with the merchandise and then you retrofit some sort of cinematic universe or some television show around the toys,” said Luke McDonagh, a professor at the London School of Economics who researches intellectual property law.
That strategy has paid huge dividends. “The Lego Movie,” made by Warner Bros. and the Lego Group, took in nearly $500 million at the global box office in 2014, and was followed by a sequel and two spinoffs. Paramount Pictures and Hasbro have turned the Transformers action-figure line into a $5 billion big-screen franchise.
The toy company Mattel has moved to turn its brands into full-fledged entertainment brands, including “Barbie,” the live-action adventure starring Margot Robbie that earned nearly $1.5 billion. A “Polly Pocket” movie, co-produced by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, is in the works.
“Characters are now the most valuable kind of intellectual property,” said Dev Gangjee, a professor of intellectual property law at the University of Oxford. “They straddle all these formats.”
The commercial successes and the critical acclaim of many of these movies have changed the dynamics of how these kinds of projects are perceived.
“‘The Lego Movie’ helped break the mold,” Dr. McDonagh said, partly because the toys were already well-loved and well-known among multiple generations.
“It established the principle that you could do something that’s so incredibly commercially minded,” he said. “In another era it would have been seen as selling out.”
There is also a certain safety for movie executives in creating films about characters that already have a sizable following, Dr. McDonagh said. “These Labubu dolls have been such a success among a certain demographic of children and young adults, they know there’s an audience out there for content related to these dolls,” he said.
As collectors around the world know, Labubu dolls are fuzzy little Nordic elves with snaggletoothed, mischievous grins and impish ears. They’re female and kindhearted. Sometimes they get into trouble. The dolls belong to a tribe called the Monsters.
Labubus were conceived as characters in a children’s book series in 2015 by Kasing Lung, an artist who was born in Hong Kong. In 2019, Mr. Lung signed a partnership with Pop Mart to turn the storybook elves into collectible designer toys, starting with a line of figurines.
The dolls quickly became a major hit, driving Pop Mart’s stocks to soar. Each time a new doll has been released, it has sold out online within minutes.
Communities have evolved around the toothy elves, which have been spotted dangling off luxury handbags and count Rihanna, Dua Lipa and Naomi Osaka as fans.
A successful movie could add more legitimacy and popularity to the toys, Dr. McDonagh said. “The idea of a Labubu movie seems like a joke right now, but maybe it will be a creative triumph.”
The endeavor is not entirely risk-free, experts said: If the movie is a flop, it could hurt sales and have the opposite effect. “Super Mario Bros.,” a 1993 movie about the popular video game, or the 2007 film “Bratz: The Movie” are examples. (A more recent film, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” earned more than $1.3 billion worldwide in 2023.)
The creation of a Labubu movie is clearly meant at least in part to be a commercial boost for the toy, intellectual property experts said.
“It’s completely ruthless marketing, no question about that,” Dr. McDonagh said. But, he added: “If you get the creative work right, audiences are willing to look past that. They’re willing to go along with a good movie.”
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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