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Hasbro Says Toy Sales Tied To The Hub Will Keep Business Plan On Track

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Wednesday November 9, 2011 @ 9:25am PSTTags: Clue, Discovery Communications, Hasbro, Hasbro Studios, The Hub, Transformers Prime

Looks like a lot of kids — OK, their parents — are snapping up the toys and games represented on shows such as Transformers Prime, Clue, and My Little Pony that they see on The Hub. Hasbro COO David D. R. Hargreaves says these sales are soaring even though initial ratings following the channel’s October 2010 launch were at “the lower end of our expectations.” His comments were part of Hasbro’s day-long presentation to investors — including several who were skeptical about its $300M investment in April 2009 for 50% of Discovery Kids. Hargreaves says that last month’s ratings among kids between 2 and 11 were the best yet for The Hub, although he warned that the numbers “probably won’t grow each week, month, or quarter.” Cable and satellite company efforts to promote the channel “spike viewership which may fall back in the following period.” Still, the exec says Hasbro’s on track with its five-year business plan. ”If The Hub network can be half the size of Cartoon Network” in five years then “that would be a success,” he says. Hasbro’s investment enabled the company to turn Hasbro Studios into a major TV production operation. It accounts for 50% of the Hub’s programming from 6:00 AM to 8:00 PM, as well as sales in 142 countries. Hasbro says it only expects to have to spend about $80M a year on channel-related expenses, lower than the $100M it anticipated. The company’s agreement with Discovery requires it to spend at least $25M a year on the channel through 2012, but “half of these payments come back to Hasbro as we own 50%.” About 70% of the program production costs are covered by income from traditional sources including ad sales and pay TV distribution fees. But the kicker for Hasbro is the additional merchandise sales — 90% from from toys and games. Hargreaves says consumers will spend $300M next year on merchandise tied to the TV shows, about 50% more than Hasbro had been selling from the products. Within two years he expects to see more than $300M a year in sales above and beyond previous levels. That would be “more than sufficient to cover any deficit” if traditional programming revenues don’t cover production costs. ”It takes time to build a network,” Hargreaves says.

 

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Universal’s ‘Ouija’ Put Into Turnaround

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday August 24, 2011 @ 11:54am PDTTags: Clue, McG, Michael Bay, Platinum Dunes, Universal Pictures

Universal has dropped another board-game film adaptation from its groundbreaking six-year exclusive pact with Hasbro, sending Ouija into turnaround to join previous projects Clue, Monopoly and Magic, The Gathering. The Ouija film — which has McG attached to direct and … Read More »

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Universal Drops ‘Clue’; Gore Verbinski Moves Forward With Hasbro Cash And New Writers

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Wednesday August 3, 2011 @ 10:04am PDTTags: Alex Proyas, Andrew Form, Bennett Schneir, Brad Fuller, Brian Goldner, Burk Sharpless, Clue, Gore Verbinski, Ian Bryce, James Lassiter, John Hlavin, John Krauss, Liam Neeson, Matt Sazama, McG, Michael Bay, Peter Berg, Ridley Scott, Sam Worthington, Scott Stuber, Taylor Kitsch, Taylor Lautner, Universal Pictures, Will Smith
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures has quietly dropped out of Clue, one of the seven Hasbro games properties the studio contracted to make into movies in a ground-breaking six-year exclusive deal signed in 2008. Clue becomes the third project out of seven to be dropped by Universal (Monopoly and Magic, The Gathering were also kicked to the curb), but none of those projects are dead. In the case of the murder mystery board game Clue, Hasbro is funding the development and producing the film with Gore Verbinski’s Blind Wink. Verbinski, director of the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, Rango and the upcoming Lone Ranger, still plans to direct Clue, and he and Blind Wink’s John Krauss are producing with Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir.

They’ve just hired Flash Gordon scribes Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama to write the Clue script. The writers will draft a take that Verbinski and his fellow producers came up with that retains the murder mystery spirit of the board game, but broadens the setting to a global stage. Beyond scripting Flash Gordon for Sony Pictures, Sharpless and Sazama are redrafting Dracula Year Zero. That project’s still hanging on at Universal, after being halted just short of the start line because of a high budget, when Alex Proyas was directing and Sam Worthington was going to star. ICM reps the writers.

Is all this a clue that Universal no longer wants to roll the dice on board game movies? Insiders say no. Rather, they tell me that Universal and Hasbro gradually narrowed their focus to the four films that most made sense for the studio: Battleship, the Peter Berg-directed summer 2012 action movie that stars Taylor Kitsch and Liam Neeson, with Universal just releasing its first trailer (below); Stretch Armstrong, which has Rob Letterman directing and Twilight Saga’s Taylor Lautner attached to play the rubbery title character; Candy Land, which is being written by Kung Fu Panda 2 co-writers Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, who’ve described the film as Lord of the Rings, with edibles; and Ouija, which has McG attached to direct and Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form producing with Ian Bryce and Hasbro’s Goldner and Schneir. Read More »

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