>>42391733Ill play effortposting devils advocate here and say that Hasbro is actually great with money, and doesnt understand MLP because theyre a toy company, not a media company. They're used to MTG, DND and Power Rangers-tier franchises where whatever non-toy shit you do is just for fun and no one really expects it to be good. The actual profit is always on the toys you actually sell, no one at Hasbro actually gives a fuck if you like the MTG youtube cinematics or not as long as youre buying the cardboard.
The one exception to this is Transformers, a completely hands-off Bonaventura-DeSanto-MichaelBay thing where each movie makes in one theater run what G3 made over a decade; and MLP G4 specifically, which grossed close to every Transformers movie combined. They clearly couldnt make g4 again and all their g4-related projects except Kino Life flopped. They tried 5 different formats and they likely tried 50 more with focus groups behind the scenes.
Looking at it from their perspective I would've made g5 aswell, the movie actually did decent so there was no reason not to greenlight the show. The scripts just blow and someone somewhere overpromised what their studio could do and they had to rush with shitty hardware. G5 Ponies have one cutiemark because they either didnt notice, couldnt render it, or couldnt fix it in time (likely). It's not like Hasbro called Atomic to make sure the scripts sucked, they just did G3 instead of G4.
Realistically even if this movie morbiusflops they'll be fine so I dont think they're worried, it's better to think of g4 as an outlier so impossible to replicate even dedicated fans cant crack it. G6 is doomed to be the same as G2, G3 and G5, it's likely the natural state of the franchise.
DnD is normie popular after Critical Role and BG3, they have a Forgotten Realms and MTG series deal with Netflix. Every good media decision Hasbro makes is mostly made for them by third parties, because they're not a media company and they dont care to be.
