A Furby Movie Is Being Made

Studio executives can find a movie franchise in just about anything these days, but even after some suspension of disbelief,you probably didn’t expect them to find a franchise anywhere near their Furby line.

If the studio has its way, though, that could very well happen, as The Weinstein Company’s Bob Weinstein revealed several new projects at a presentation at Casa De Mar this week and that selection did include a Furby film (via Variety).

“I’m rolling the dice and playing for hits,” Weinstein said.

Hasbro executives were also on hand at the event, including Stephen Davis and Josh Feldman. They revealed that the project will be a live-action CGI hybrid. “We think that this can resonate as a four-quadrant film,” Davis said. “It can’t just by a 90-minute commercial.”

No one has been attached to direct the family film, but Feldman said: “We’re out to David Fincher.”

For those who aren’t familiar with Furby’s, they are small little plush critters that were insanely popular in the 1990’s. They became popular due to their speaking and language functions, but after awhile the fad died down. Hasbro relaunched the brand in 2012 and has since continued to evolve the line with several spinoff iterations.

Furby is the first part of a new focus on quality over quantity, as Weinstein has said in the past that the gluttony of films watered down the overall product.

“In the past, I was producing and releasing between seven and eight films a year and the quality suffered,” Weinstein added. “Going forward, I decided on bringing my productions to three or four years at the most. I’ve also decided to make them bigger budgets, more director and star-driven but still with the idea of creating franchises of a bigger nature.”

Furby will join a long line of toy-centric adaptations, with the most recent being Dreamworks Trolls starring Justin Timerberalke and Anna Kendrick. Furby’s aren’t the toy craze they once were, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an audience for it, and time will tell if the studio can get that audience to turn out in droves.