Hasbro Is No Longer In The Toy Powered Movie Business

After selling the entertainment company it bought a few years prior, Hasbro has announced it’s out of the movie business.

It is so hard to tell what a successful movie is these days. It isn’t enough to make a movie that a lot of people really like and pay money to see. By Hasbro’s reckoning, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was a flop. And that’s not even touching the recent Transformers One, which is not the first movie in the Transformers series but may well be the last.

Hasbro has decided that movies aren’t a big part of its plans for the future. According to recent Bloomberg reporting, Hasbro will no longer be paying partial costs for movies licensing their IP. Which I guess means you won’t have to worry about a Monopoly: GO! movie any time soon.

Hasbro Backs Out of The ‘Biz (Show Biz, That Is)

According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Hasbro will be backing away from funding movies. Anyone with a burning desire to make a Peppa Pig cinematic spectacular can pay for the privilege all by themselves. Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks has said this is part of Hasbro’s move to engage with its audience where they already are:

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

– Chris Cocks

Sorry, we’re not getting a sequel.

While the phrase “digital expressions of their favorite brands” is perhaps the worst way to describe video and/or mobile games, it does seem to be the truth. Monopoly GO! is a huge success for Hasbro, as is Baldur’s Gate 3.

We know that several as-yet-unannounced D&D games are in the works. Many have also reportedly been canceled. But, Cocks’ move to shift Hasbro to focus on digital expression seems to be overall good news for Wizards of the Coast.

After all, WotC isn’t just the Magic/D&D company anymore. They are Hasbro’s digital arm. That’s why they got that fancy new logo a few years back and everything. So, with Hasbro moving more to games, you can be on the lookout for things like Digital Commander. And maybe, just maybe, Peppa’s Gate 3.

I’m just saying, Peppa Pig in BG3 would be really funny.

Bell of Lost Souls Staff Writer and DM, J.R. covers RPGs of all stripes and on occasion eats sandwiches. You can ask him about either at [email protected]

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