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When it comes to turning a beloved toy into a box office hit, it’d be hard to top 2023s Greta Gerwig-directed Barbie. But Mattel veteran Robbie Brenner, who produced the nearly $1.5 billion-grossing film, has no interest in resting on her laurels. In June, the toy company launched Mattel Studios, bringing together its film and TV efforts under Brenner. At the studios president and chief content officer, Brenner now oversees more 15 projects in development, each with a unique twist. There’s a Hot Wheels movie helmed by Wicked director Jon M. Chu, a horror-skewing adaptation of Barney being written by The Bears Ayo Edebiri, and an adaptation of the He-man property Masters of the Universe. Most recently, Mattel announced that it’s working with Minions studio Illumination on an animated Barbie movie. I spoke to Brenner about how she chooses which intellectual property to develop into bigger projects, the importance of delivering both fan service and organic storytelling, and how she plans to replicate Barbies success with another toy franchise. You came to Mattel from Miramax seven years ago. When you first started at Mattel, how did you take stock of what properties you wanted to develop into bigger projects? Where else do you come in your life, aside from Disney, where you have endless titles that you and your kids grew up playing with? When I came into the company, there were like 200 brands, either from Mattel or from buying other libraries or buying other companies. I looked at each title and used my intuition, to say like, okay, that title, that brand, that sounds like that could be like a big theatrical experience. And so I whittled it down to some 40 titles. Those were my starting block for building out this film division. Barbie was the last movie that I ever thought we were gonna make. Everybody has a relationship with Barbie, and that makes it even harder to find a way into that story. For us it was really Gretas love and affinity for Barbie, and her voice, which is so unexpected and authentic. Thats the way were trying to approach all these moviesdoing things that feel like they have a reason to exist by working with these unique voices. Especially when were consumed by our phones, the only way to cut through that is to do something that feels wholly unique in an authentic way. To be able to open up my rolodex and pair the filmmakers and writers Ive worked with up with these brands has been so much fun. Did the success of Barbie change your approach to how you develop a project? You need a strong script and somebody that has the vision to tell the story in a way that feels different and interesting. That has always been a huge component of how we approach our IP. Were just keeping our heads down and trying to tell great stories. Barbie was certainly a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenonone could only hope to replicate that. But weve got Masters of the Universe coming out next year, and its the polar opposite to Barbie. Its this incredible spectacle that [director] Travis Knight has pulled off with the rich canon of characters and mythology. Itll be fun to show the world that we can do so many things. Similarly, [tk IP] Matchbox is a high-octane action movie, but it has so much heart. Im sure a lot of people will compare everything we do to Barbie. Not everything can be Barbie. We look at these brands individually and we treat them individually. Sometimes were going to make smaller movies that are just great stories that need to be told, and other times there will be just huge tentpole movies. I think as long as we continue to stick with our approach and vision, good things will come. Now that Mattels TV and film efforts are unified, has your approach changed? You mentioned Disney as having a similarly rich IP library. Do you take inspiration from their approach? Movies and TV, theatrical and streaming, theyre all very blurred lines right now. So I just look at it all holistically as contentshort form, premium, scriptedand I want to work with the same writers and directors that I have relationships with. Mattel Studios is about aligning under one banner and looking holistically about where a brand is better sittingas a television show or a movie. The philosophy is the same: telling great, unexpected stories with brave filmmakers. Over the next couple months, youll see a lot of movement on television. We have a lot of shows in negotiation right now with incredible creatives. Were all working together to maximize the evergreen properties we have to make sure that were franchising them in the best way so were not stepping on each other. Its more synergy and made a lot of sense for all of us to sit together and work together to maximize Mattels potential.
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E-Commerce
The days of flying just to move from point A to point B are over. Delta has just officially declared that were entering the era of the lifestyle airline. Nowadays, selecting a flight no longer means simply choosing an airline to fly with. It’s a multistep process that involves navigating a sea of ancillary fees, wading through seating charts, and selecting add-ons like extra legroom. Cutting through that noise requires brands to go to extra lengths to draw in customers. For Delta, that means repositioning itself as not just a form of transport, but also a luxury, personalized experience. The brand just refreshed its core identity for the first time since 2008 to embody that shift. In collaboration with the design firm DixonBaxi, Delta is rolling out a refresh that includes new brand colors, motion elements, and typography to appear as more than just an airline, according to Libby Tsoi, design director at DixonBaxi. [Image: courtesy DixonBaxi/Delta] Air travel gets a chaotic rebrand The landscape of air travel has been in a major state of flux over the past several years, as the top airline brands in the U.S. chase bigger bottom lines through an increasingly complex fee system. According to a Senate report released late last year, between 2018 and 2023, the airlines American, Delta, United, Spirit, and Frontier collectively raked in $12.4 billion in revenue from ancillary fees like advanced seat assignments and carry-on bags. In 2024 alone, Spirit Airlines moved further from its origins as a low-budget carrier by implementing a new seat class with extra add-ons, while Southwest abandoned its iconic bags fly free and open seating policies altogether in favor of a tiered pricing system. This July, Delta announced that it has begun using AI to institute dynamic pricing based on factors like seat availability, current news, weather conditions, and even fluctuating oil prices. As brands continue to ratchet up their extra add-ons, theyre starting to look more and more similar. That means the pressure to offer the next best perk or experience is mounting across the board. [Image: courtesy DixonBaxi/Delta] So far, Deltas answer to this conundrum has been to start branding its travel as a premium experience, rather than just a form of transportation. The brand is currently in the process of redesigning all of its planes’ interiors for a more luxe feel, including by installing new seat fabrics, mood lighting, and a swanky color palette. For its most high-paying ticket holders, it’s also begun rolling out a series of ultra-opulent airport lounges. In 2024, premium ticket offerings accounted for $5.2 billion out of Deltas total $15.6 billion revenue. Delta CEO Ed Bastian noted in the companys full-year earnings report that he expected consumers to increasingly seek the premium products and experiences that Delta provides. One way the company is supporting that goal is by adopting a more premium brand identity. [Image: courtesy DixonBaxi/Delta] Is this the beginning of the ‘lifestyle airline’ era? Deltas vision with this brand refresh was bold, Tsoi says. The brands end goal was to stand shoulder to shoulder with the worlds most iconic lifestyle brands. Lifestyle branding describes a kind of branding that expands a consumers brand association beyond an actual product to a way of living, based on that brands core values. Its become something of a buzzword across categories in recent months, with names like Tesla, Erewhon, and Sweetgreen all striving for lifestyle status in some capacity. [Image: courtesy DixonBaxi/Delta] Even our earliest creative campfires werent filled with aircraft, but with lifestyle imagerypeople, moments, stories, Tsoi says. This shift in mindset shaped everything: the tone, the aesthetic, the system. We brought an editorial sensibility to the visual language, framing Delta not just as a carrier of people, but as a curator of experience. To that end, Deltas updated look has a significantly less corporate feel. The lifestyle photography has been pulled out of the airport or plane altogether, showing Delta passengers in bustling cities and mountain vistas. The brands logo and wordmark remain physically unchanged, but DixonBaxi reimagined the classic Delta symbol as a 3D object, setting guidelines around how it can be used to bring motion into Deltas visual identity. Alongside the type foundry Pangram Pangram, DixonBaxi also developed two new bespoke typefaces: Delta Sans and Delta Serif. Delta Serif, which features sculpted terminals drawn directly from the angled geometry of the Delta icon, can be used in a thin weight that will eventually lend an artsier feel to Deltas website, boarding passes, and ad campaigns. And, while red and blue will remain core Delta colors, the full palette has been expanded to include more emotive accent hues like sky blue, mint green, and neon pink. The new look began rolling out on Deltas social channels over the past few weeks, and will eventually evolve to encompass lounges, in-flight design, and out-of-home ad campaigns. Tsoi emphasizes that the effort to reimagine Deltas branding has only just gotten underway, and fans can expect further updates in the coming months. [Image: courtesy DixonBaxi/Delta] Given Deltas status as a leading player in the industry, it wouldnt be a surprise if its move to become a lifestyle airline sets a new tone for how other airlines begin brand their own flight experiences.
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E-Commerce
Matthew Williams has slept very little since he learned about Sacha Stone’s plan to build a sovereign micronation on 60 acres of land near his home in rural Tennessee. What began as a quick Google search in April quickly became hours of research and then days, then weeks. It was between working on this and then stressing about working on this, he says. Within a month, between me and my wife, we watched over 30 hours of his videos. With his long hair and often bare chest, intense patter, and hundreds of thousands of online followers, the 59-year-old British “peace activist” looks like the archetype of a globetrotting, spiritual guru. In late June, Stone arrived in Surgoinsville, a sleepy hamlet 90 minutes northeast of Knoxville, to lead dozens of supporters in a “consecration” ceremony at the site, dedicating what he calls the NewEarth Tanasi Micronation as a template for the emergent Rainbow Warrior Tribe. But beyond the peace and rainbows, Williams had seen something much darker in Stones “sovereign” movement: a mix of extreme far-right ideas, an alliance of influential fringe figures like Michael Flynn and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and a revenge-minded rhetorical war against a parade of bogeymen, from governments to globalists. In June, Stone and dozens of supporters gathered at the NewEarth nation site in Surgoinsville, Tenn. [Photo: Matthew Williams] The battles have also become a brisk business, with speaking tours, retreats, health products and memberships, which Stone promotes to his hundreds of thousands of followers. For a “donation” of $10,000, Stone has said, members of the NewEarth micronation will be able to exist tax-free in a futuristic-looking residential enclave, with access to an on-site healing center specializing in advanced microbiology” and cures. A devoted Christian and libertarian, Williams, 31, believes in religious freedom and a hands-off approach by the government. (Both political parties would hate me, he says.) But for months, hes been pressing Hawkins County, where hes lived for two decades to do something, meeting with officials, hosting community meetings, posting signs and Facebook updates, and enlisting dozens of neighbors in building a local groundswell against NewEarth. If they were a hippie cult and they wanted to do stuff out in the middle of the woods, I couldnt care less, Williams says. But a lot of Sacha Stones theories kind of fall in line with that QAnon theory, and people here who associate themselves with QAnon tend to be extremist, right-wing, violent individuals. Stone and his deputies have been pushing back against Williams and the local opposition, insisting that his movement is peacefulthat it isnt a cultand decrying defamatory actions and false claims in local forums. Online, Stone has used more aggressive rhetoric, alluded to NewEarth members strapped with guns, and alleged that Williams and other critics are part of a Satanic conspiracy. Stone did not respond to questions from Fast Company. Local officials are uneasy too, but say the NewEarth group has broken no laws. It obviously is not something that most people in the community are looking forward to having in Hawkins County, Mayor Mark DeWitt told NBC affiliate WCYB in May. But we have to realize that right now, theres nothing that theyre doing that can stop them from being here at this point. Recently, Williams and two dozen neighbors began meeting near the site simply to pray together. Practically everyone weve talked to, theyre afraid, and theyre worried about what is coming, he says. Hes been carrying pepper spray too, just in case someone tries to do anything stupid.” This has Waco, Texas, written all over it “The world’s gone mad,” Sacha Stone told the audience, and he was mad too. It was August 2023 at the Las Vegas stop of the ReAwaken America Tour, a MAGA-themed religious roadshow, and hundreds of ticketholders had just watched MyPillow founder Mike Lindell deliver his evidence of election fraud; Donald Trump Jr. was that nights headliner. With pendants swaying across his bare torso, Stone gripped the microphone, and, temper flaring, raised his voice to offer his central message: “Do not comply, do not do anything, anything that moves against the spirit, that moves against your soul!” His British accent and aging rocker persona easily stood out at the ultraconservative confab, a Christian nationalist revival meeting-meets-QAnon expo cofounded by former Trump national security adviser and QAnon icon Michael Flynn in the wake of January 6. But his speech recited many familiar claims. “They are planning to asphyxiate your children and your parents from God-given oxygen, and inject mRNA, genetic therapy, into every single child in this blessed country, he told the audience. The government gives you two things: mind control and trafficking. Thats it baby! Thats it! Sacha Stone at the Arise USA tour in Milton, Florida, in May 2021 [Photo: ZimmComm/Flickr] For more than a decade, Stones “sovereignty” movement has pit him against an array of existential threats: 5G, COVID-19 vaccinations, Bill Gates, the World Health Organization, the deep tate, pedophiles, the United Nations, Jesuits, the Vatican, globalists and cabals suppressing advanced, alien technologies and violating “natural law.” One project, the International Tribunal of Natural Justice (ITNJ), has held hearings that purport to show corporations hiding as government engaged in human trafficking and child sex abuse. At times, Stone has argued that satanic government policies warrant violent resistance. At some point, you have to drag these people into the market square we have to hang them by the neck until dead, if they continue to stick HIV/AIDS into our babies, he said in 2021. Years after the pandemic, messages like Stones are flourishing online. With a two-time president who’s built a political career out of spreading falsehoods and promoting conspiracy theorists, even hiring them to top cabinet posts, Trumps second term has given new permission to wild, inflammatory ideas and the profiteers who push them. Social media companies have loosened their rules around false content, too, just as the Trump administration has slashed funding for misinformation research, and gutted the Homeland Security office responsible for helping localities counter domestic extremism. All of this is particularly concerning now, since the evidence suggests that conspiracy thinking is fueling historically high levels of polarization and political violence, from the attack on the Capitol to a wave of attacks and assassinations. Of course, the country has been mired in dangerous conspiracy theories since long before Trump leapt onto Fox News with questions about President Barack Obamas birthplace (or onto Jeffrey Epsteins jet, for that matter). Since the early 2010s, Stone has cultivated a kind of spiritual conspiracismembraced for decades by both the countercultural left and the Christian rightand leveraged a motley alliance of very online freedom fighters, from anti-vax advocates and cosmic starseeds to tax protesters, pedophile-fighting patriots and white supremacists. But his right-wing ideology of sovereignty, with its illiberal, authoritarian leanings, also descends from a tradition that dates back hundreds of years. One of Stone’s recurring fixations are the Sabbateans, a 17th-century Messianic Jewish movement that has become a focus of contemporary antisemitic conspiracy theories. Stone has managed to evade direct controversy for years by avoiding explicitly antisemitic language, and cloaking his theories in lengthy monologues with seemingly harmless, esoteric ideas about geoportals or the mechanics of ascension. In a 2017 talk in Dartington, England, posted on YouTube, he invites his audience to question whether Hitler was misrepresented in historical accounts. Adolf Hitler, the big bad scary guy, well thats a very compelling spellbinding [sic], he said, adding that ninety percent of the facts that we spout about the Second World War were introduced in 1952. Stones fortunes changed during the pandemic, when his anti-vaccine rants led YouTube and then Facebook to temporarily remove his accounts, costing him tens of thousands of followers. But as public trust sank and social media algorithms fed a fevered search for answers, the pandemic and America’s political chaos also opened new avenues for Stone’s repertoire of spiritualism, anti-government conspiracies, and commercial hustles. He drew support from networks of conspiracy superspreaders, like the “World Doctors Alliance,” a transatlantic group of vaccine skeptic health practitioners that reached millions during the pandemic. Neighbors posted protest signs around Stanley Valley ahead of Stone’s arrival. [Photo: Matthew Williams] New Age, esoteric strains of conspiracy thinking, like those that animate Stones movement, arent inherently far-right, says Marc Tuters, an assistant professor in media studies at the University of Amsterdam who examines political subcultures. But, he says, esoteric ideas have historically been popular in fascist movements, and notions that everything is connected and nothing is as it seems can easily slide into conspiracy thinking. When that happens, Tuters warns, it becomes dangerous, because it undermines the trust that holds society together. Amid legitimate concerns about failing political elites, the internet has provided the perfect environment for that kind of thinking to thrive, a place where anyone can become a kind of channel and broadcaster, says Tuters. A cursory web search only begins to hint at Stones reach, which now extends to more than 450 thousand followers across Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Rumble and Telegram. By June 2024, his videos had racked up over 25 million views, not including the videos that have been taken down, like his 2019 documentary 5G Apocalypse. The hour-long filmin which he alleges the phone networks are weapons that cause dementia, diabetes and mental illnessreached more than 1 million views
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