Toy giant Hasbro has reached an agreement with Sony Pictures for the right to produce a full line of toys for Sony's summer blockbuster sequel Men in Black 2. With Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones reprising their roles from the 1997 comic book-based mega-hit, MIB 2 will hit theaters on July 3, 2002. Hasbro will have a full line of toys including action figures, plush toys, and vehicles in stores by the time the film opens. Like the original Men in Black film, MIB 2 will spawn an animated series that will debut in the fall of 2002 and keep the property going long after the film has left the theaters.
Hasbro, which reported strong earnings for the third quarter (see 'Hasbro Q3 Surprisingly Strong'), has gradually resumed the kind of high profile licensing of movie and television properties that it eschewed in the wake of the losses incurred with its line of Star Wars toys based on Phantom Menace. In addition to Men in Black 2, Hasbro has moved heavily in the direction of licensing TV-based animated properties including the revived Transformers, the Zoids (see 'Zoids Coming to Cartoon Network'), and Medabots (see 'Hasbro to Produce Medabot Toys'). The fact that Men in Black 2 is also set for a run as an animated TV cartoon series undoubtedly played a role in Hasbro's decision to go after the license. The pronounced trend for this summer's movie blockbusters to amass almost their entire theatrical gross earnings in just the first couple of weeks of release certainly doesn't enhance the value of the toy licenses associated with these front-loaded blockbusters--they have legs about as long as Hank Hill's dad.
