Mattel Creations

Mattel Television was the television production division of American toy and entertainment company Mattel, originally founded under the name Mattel Creations on March 30, 2016. It is headed by general manager and senior vice president, Frederic Soulie.

Mattel Creations
Mattel Creations was formed on 2017, bringing all three of Mattel's internal content production units: Mattel Playground Productions (now Mattel Films), HiT Entertainment, and the American Girl creative team in Middleton, Wisconsin under their auspices and merge them. Mattel's then-chief content officer Catherine Balsam-Schwaber was named to head the unit, while Christopher Keenan was moved up out of HiT to be the division's Senior Vice President of content development & production. Two pacts with DHX Media (now WildBrain) and 9 Story Media Group were placed into Mattel Creations. The DHX partnership with Mattel included HiT properties (Bob the Builder and Fireman Sam) and direct Mattel properties (Little People and Polly Pocket); the partnership included new multi-platform content development and production and distribution of new and existing content. The 9 Story deal was directly with HiT for 2017 revivals of Barney & Friends and Angelina Ballerina; there were originally reboots of both which were announced, but as at now, those plans are/were either scrapped or nothing was heard of in terms of greenlighting them.

Mattel Creations and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Content Group had agreed to an exclusive worldwide SVOD rights agreement for the Barbie film library, which on 17 October 2016 for the next seven years and included the two film releases at the time; Barbie: Star Light Adventure and Barbie: Video Game Hero.

With Balsam-Schwaber taking the general manager position at Craftsy, Mattel's president and chief operating officer Richard L. Dickson took over responsibility for Mattel Creations and was not planning to fill the chief creative officer post.

Reorganization to today
Mattel hired former Disney Channels Worldwide (now Disney Branded Television) programming executive Adam Bonnett as executive producer and head of a reorganized Mattel Television on 5 February 2019, which effectively replaced Mattel Creations. A week later, Mattel TV announced a slate of 22 animated and live-action TV programs. This division works with the franchise management division's senior vice president of content distribution and business development, Frederic Soulie, who would also triple as the new division's general manager and senior vice president.

On February 23, 2021, Mattel Television announced the return of the Monster High brand 3 years after its last production with a CGI-animated series and a live-action musical film, which will both air on Nickelodeon and Paramount+ in the United States in Autumn/Fall 2022. On August 30, 2021, with the Universal deal expired, Mattel struck a deal with local home video releasing powerhouses, Mill Creek Entertainment and NCircle Entertainment, for the newer Netflix-based content for DVD, Blu-ray and Digital HD distribution to U.S. and Canadian markets.

On 7 September 2021, following the debut of the streaming television film Barbie: Big City, Big Dreams on Netflix, Mattel hired former NBCUniversal vice president of current programming, Philip "Phil" Breman, to be the division's vice president for scripted and unscripted live-action series development. Following its global popularity success, Mattel Television unveiled a 26-episode CGI-animated streaming TV musical serial adaptation and continuation of the film on 1 February 2022 known as Barbie: It Takes Two. The first half of episodes were broadcast on television in Australia, UK & Ireland, Canada and Portugal and debuted in the U.S. on Netflix on April 8, with the other half to debut in September.