This was always bound to happen. In Hollywood, if it’s cute, vaguely horrifying, and already wildly profitable, someone will try to make it into a movie. Enter: Labubu, the scruffy little gremlin that’s been glued to Karl Marx’s grave, dangling from Rihanna’s purse, and generally haunting TikTok for the past 18 months.
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures — the same studio behind Jumanji and KPop Demon Hunters — has officially snagged screen rights to the Labubu toy line. The deal’s fresh, which is code for: there’s no writer, no stars, no director, and no one’s quite sure yet if it’ll be live-action or animated. But someone, somewhere in Los Angeles just decided this tiny chaos creature deserves a cinematic universe.
Labubu comes from the mind of Hong Kong-born, Europe-based artist Kasing Lung, who first introduced the character in his The Monsters book series. When Chinese retailer Pop Mart took over production in 2019, things went nuclear.
The company’s “blind box” strategy — where fans buy sealed packages without knowing which doll they’re getting — turned shopping into a form of gambling with cuter stakes. Pop Mart’s profits reportedly soared 350 per cent earlier this year, with collectors dropping five and six-figure sums on limited editions. Did anyone say 24 karat gold Labubu?!
And it’s not just collectors driving the mania. K-pop star Lisa from BLACKPINK made Labubu a full-blown fashion accessory in 2024 and celebs having being touting the cursed looking monster everywhere, helping the little mischief-maker leap from niche toy shelves to global status symbols faster than you could say “late-stage capitalism”.
Now, Sony’s reportedly planning to do what Hollywood does best: squeeze sweet, market-tested chaos into a feature-length format. There’s no story yet — or even confirmation of whether Labubu will speak, attack, or simply vibe — but honestly, that hasn’t stopped anyone before. Remember 2012’s Battleship? That film came from a board game where the dialogue was “B4 hit”.
Still, turning Labubu into film IP does make a twisted kind of sense. The Lego Movie and Barbie both turned brand power into cinematic gold, and Sony’s clearly betting these little gremlins can pull the same trick. Because if there’s anything Hollywood loves more than storytelling, it’s doing the same thing over and over again for profits till we hate it.
Sony had no comment, per THR. Which, fair — if we were about to drop millions on a scruffy plush toy cinematic universe, we might keep quiet too.
Lead image: Labubu
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