The Daniel Kaluuya-produced movie featuring Barney the Dinosaur will be an “adult”, “surrealistic” and “A24-type” film inspired by Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, it has been revealed.
In a wide-ranging report on the film-making plans of toymaker Mattel in the New Yorker, Mattel Films executive Kevin McKeon said of the project: “We’re leaning into the millennial angst of the property rather than fine-tuning this for kids. It’s really a play for adults. Not that it’s R-rated, but it’ll focus on some of the trials and tribulations of being thirtysomething, growing up with Barney – just the level of disenchantment within the generation.”
He added: “It would be so daring of us, and really underscore that we’re here to make art.”
Mattel announced its intention to make a Barney movie with Kaluuya in 2019. At the time, Kaluuya (star of Get Out and Black Panther) said: “Barney was a ubiquitous figure in many of our childhoods, then he disappeared into the shadows, left misunderstood.”
The project is currently listed as being in development, with Beef creator Lee Sung Jin attached as writer. Barney originated as a character in a 1988 self-released video made by Sheryl Leach; the popular early-years TV series premiered on PBS in 1992. A cinema spin-off, Barney’s Great Adventure, was released in 1998. Mattel acquired the licence to make Barney action figures in 2001, through its Fisher Price subsidiary, and purchased the entire Barney brand in 2011 by acquiring Hit Entertainment. Mattel are also planning a new Barney TV series (scheduled for 2024) alongside wider franchise activity, including clothing and accessories for adult fans.
The New Yorker report also listed a number of other potential film projects that Mattel is developing from its products, including a Magic 8 Ball horror comedy, a JJ Abrams-directed Hot Wheels film, and a Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots movie produced by and starring Vin Diesel. Tom Hanks is also understood to be attached to a movie featuring Major Matt Mason, an action figure first produced in the 1960s that was supposedly the inspiration for Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear.
The report also revealed that Greta Gerwig, director and co-writer of Mattel’s soon-to-be-released Barbie film, is to write and direct “at least two” films based on CS Lewis’s Narnia novels for Netflix. The streaming platform acquired the rights to the series in 2018, and at the time it was reported that the company was “looking to build a Narnia cinematic universe that encompasses film and TV in the vein of Star Trek and Marvel”. Between 2005 and 2010, three film adaptations were released – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – before the producing studio Walden Media’s rights expired in 2011.