Hasbro’s lucrative My Little Pony franchise is adding a live-action movie to its stable of content, with Amazon MGM Studios on board as a production partner, according to entertainment newsletter The InSneider. 

Details about the project are scarce, although live action represents a new pasture for the classic play brand that debuted on toy shelves in the early ’80s and made the Toy Hall of Fame last year. It remains to be seen if the film will attempt something similar to Disney’s live-action Lion King movies, which used photorealistic CG animation to achieve more authentic animal characters.

Over the decades, My Little Pony has spawned several animated films and series revolving around its herd of colorful ponies living in a mystical land. Perhaps the most notable one was a 2D-animated series called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which had a decade-long run (2010 to 2019) on Discovery Family and also resonated with older fans well beyond its intended target demo. During its heyday, the brand generated more than US$650 million in annual retail sales in 2013, and it surpassed US$1 billion the following year.

MLP’s most recent movie adaptation was 2021’s My Little Pony: A New Generation, which grossed US$4.1 million with a limited pandemic release but continues to do well in streaming. The CG-animated film generated roughly 5.1 million views on Netflix in the second half of 2024, as per the streamer’s most recent What We Watched data.

Both partners have experience with this kind of project. In fact, Hasbro is currently working on live-action movie adaptations for its trading card game Magic the Gathering and board game Clue. And Amazon MGM Studios recently put a live-action film based on MGA Entertainment’s doll brand Bratz into its pipeline.