Barney is a dinosaur who we all know from TV, but now Mattel is bringing Barney & Friends to the big screen.
Variety reports that Mattel Films and Daniel Kaluuya’s (Get Out, Black Panther) production company, 59%, are teaming up to make a live-action Barney movie about a stuffed purple dinosaur who’s brought to life through the imaginations of children who all love to sing and dance to solve their problems.
“Barney was a ubiquitous figure in many of our childhoods, then he disappeared into the shadows, left misunderstood,” Kaluuya said in curious statement. “We’re excited to explore this compelling modern-day hero and see if his message of ‘I love you, you love me’ can stand the test of time.”
So what will this new Barney for the 2020s look like exactly?
Mattel Films head Robbie Brenner explained that the movie will be something of a new spin on the classic children’s TV series that’ll appeal to audiences young and old. “Working with Daniel Kaluuya will enable us to take a completely new approach to Barney that will surprise audiences and subvert expectations,” she said.
“The project will speak to the nostalgia of the brand in a way that will resonate with adults, while entertaining today’s kids.”
Given how the basic Barney formula seems not to have changed all that much over the past three decades, it’ll be interesting to see how the new Barney movie will “subvert expectations,” and if it’ll end up taking the gritty-action adventure route Dora the Explorer’s big-screen adaptation went with when the movie drops sometime in the future.