While Beanie Babies are little more than just cute kids toys now, back in the 1990s, the plush toys were a major craze that saw collectors going to great lengths to acquire them with some Beanie Babies selling for thousands of dollars before the craze ended, leaving many collectors with huge collections of little value and, in some cases, massive debt. Now, the story of the Beanie Baby craze is to be told in a new movie with Elizabeth Banks and Zach Galifianakis set to star.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Banks and Galifianakis will star in The Beanie Bubble alongside Sarah Snook (Succession) and Geraldine Viswanathan (Blockers) in a new film for Apple. The film, which is based on Zac Bissionette’s book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, was written by Saturday Night Live alum Kristin Gore. Gore will also co-direct the film alongside her husband, filmmaker, and Ok Go singer Damian Kulash.
The Beanie Bubble is described as follows: “It pulls back the curtain on the absurdities and injustices of the American Dream — particularly the female relationship to it. It’s a celebration of the women who helped power Ty Warner’s success, whose strengths and good instincts shaped and amplified the phenomenon, but whose names are not on the Beanie Babies’ heart-shaped tags.”
The Beanie Bubble will be produced by Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, and Karen Lunder. Galifianakis also serves as an executive producer. Exactly who each of the actors are playing in the film has not yet been revealed.
Beanie Babies were first created by H. Ty Warner in 1993 and the toys soon became a major collectible and fad, so much so by 1995 they were a hot toy, something bolstered by the company’s strategy of deliberate scarcity which in turn drove a huge secondary market for the toys. At the height of the Beanie Baby craze, some of the toys were selling for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. The Beanie Baby craze has since been called the world’s first internet sensation. A documentary about Beanie Babies, Beanie Mania, was released in December 2021 on HBO Max.
What do you think about the Beanie Baby craze getting a movie? Let us know in the comments!
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