Barbie is entering the world of reality TV.
Mattel Television announced on Monday that it is developing a fashion design competition series titled Barbie Fashion Battle. Co-produced by Hollywood Game Night production company Mission Control Media, the reality show will revolve around designing clothes for the titular doll.
Over the years, Barbie and its parent company Mattel have teamed up with a number of famous clothing brands and fashion designers like Maison Margiela, Burberry, and Ralph Lauren to create limited-edition wardrobe collections for the doll brand. But in Barbie Fashion Battle, the spotlight will be given to unknown promising designers.
Barbie Fashion Battle will feature 12 up-and-coming adult designers who will be divided into two separate fashion houses, each headed by a celebrity fashion icon. The contestants will compete with each other in creating the best miniature high-fashion collections for Barbie, which will be presented in cinematic reveal sequences. The winning designer will receive a cash prize as well as the opportunity to design a line of Barbie doll fashions for the e-commerce and content platform Mattel Creations.
Barbie Fashion Battle will be led by Mattel Television’s Adam Bonnett, with Dwight D. Smith and Michael Agbabian executive producing for Mission Control Media.
In a statement, Bonnett said that the competition series is part of Mattel Television’s efforts to expand the Barbie content universe with new scripted and unscripted content, which includes the recently announced Barbie & Chelsea The Lost Birthday, among other projects.
“Barbie is one of the most recognized brands in the world so the opportunity to collaborate with Mattel on this fun and creative project has been incredible,” added Smith. “We can’t wait to introduce viewers to this colorful world and see all of the stunning work these fashion designers create.”
As of now, it’s not clear what TV network or streaming service the new reality series will be made available.
Barbie Fashion Battle joins game shows based on UNO and Whac-A-Mole in the list of unscripted projects currently in development at Mattel Television.
Outside of TV, a Barbie big-screen feature film has also been in the works for several years. Back in 2016 when it was still being developed at Sony, the live-action movie originally had comedian Amy Schumer tied to it. Fast forward to 2019, Margot Robbie boarded the project after Warner Bros. started to work on their own version. Oscar nominees Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were previously tapped to write the script for the flick.