It was only a matter of time before Hollywood got in on the craze. Sony Pictures has reportedly acquired the screen adaptation rights to make a movie based on the wildly popular Chinese dolls known as Labubu.
Labubu are miniature, plush monster dolls with big anime eyes, pointy teeth, and baby faces, and they’ve been a sensation ever since K-pop star and “The White Lotus” actress Lisa endorsed them and gave them international attention.
According to a report in THR, Sony has simply purchased the screen rights, closing the deal this week, and there’s no creative talent involved. It’s not even clear if this would be a live-action or animated project. Sony declined to comment when reached by IndieWire.
Before you say that Hollywood is all out of ideas, the Labubu toys do have some storytelling history behind them. Artist Kasing Lung designed Labubu as inspired by Nordic mythology and introduced the characters in the now-out-of-print stories from 2015 called “Monsters,” which has a whole bunch of other characters around the Labubu as well.
To that end, Chinese brand Pop Mart this summer announced it had intended to launch an in-house film unit to quickly capitalize on the fad. And that tracks. Our own Alison Foreman wrote in July that if a Chinese company was making its own Labubu movies, there’s nothing stopping it from turning to generative AI to make it and do so quickly, but that certainly wouldn’t be the case if it was an American studio project.
Part of the appeal of Labubu was that you’d have to buy a blind box, with no clear idea which Labubu you would get. Ultra rare ones have fetched hundreds or thousands of dollars online as the toys’ popularity has grown. “South Park” earlier this year lampooned just how crazy obsessed kids have gotten over the toys, with girls in South Park using the Labubus to perform demonic blood sacrifice rituals that ultimately help to spawn the coming birth of the anti-Christ (it’s been a wild season).
Though you could argue the fad has already peaked and that kids will have moved on from Labubu faster than you can say “6-7,” let alone by the time a movie comes out. But should Sony Animation make it, the studio had a hit with “KPop Demon Hunters,” and there’s been a string of projects based on other trendy toy brands like Ugly Dolls, Bratz, Trolls, and more, and after the success of “Barbie,” Mattel has over a dozen different projects in development based on its various toys.
THR first reported the news.