Barbie Sequel Stalls as Warner Bros. Faces December Deadline

Warner Bros. wants to return to Barbie Land, but the studio is running out of time to reunite the team responsible for its $1.4 billion hit.

A sequel to 2023’s Barbie has stalled while Warner Bros. attempts to reach new agreements with director and co-writer Greta Gerwig and stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, according to reports from The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times.

The studio reportedly has until December to finalize those deals before its rights to make a sequel revert to Mattel.

That does not mean Barbie 2 has been canceled. It means the sequel has not been formally secured—and Warner Bros. has a limited window in which to make it happen with the original creative team.

Warner Bros. has not reunited the Barbie team

Gerwig, Robbie and Gosling did not have contractual options requiring them to return when the first film was made. Following its extraordinary commercial success, Warner Bros. must negotiate entirely new agreements with the people who helped turn Barbie into its highest-grossing worldwide release.

“We have a rights deal with Mattel in place and have made a series of big offers to try and finalize deals to make the next Barbie film,” Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairs Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca said in a statement published by TheWrap. “Unfortunately, we have been unable to reach an agreement thus far.”

The negotiations reportedly include upfront salaries and additional compensation tied to the sequel’s box-office performance. Gosling is reportedly seeking approximately $20 million to return as Ken.

Warner Bros. disputes portions of the reporting surrounding the negotiations, including claims that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav rejected proposed compensation packages for being too generous. The studio maintains that representatives for the talent rejected its most recent offer in May and have not submitted a counteroffer.

Greta Gerwig reportedly has a Barbie sequel story

The sequel may be stalled financially, but it no longer appears to be stalled creatively.

Gerwig and her husband and writing partner, Noah Baumbach, reportedly have an idea for another Barbie movie and are prepared to begin writing it. However, they have not disclosed the story to Warner Bros. and do not intend to start work until new agreements are completed.

That represents a significant change from the immediate aftermath of the first movie, when Gerwig and Robbie both questioned whether its story needed to continue.

The original film was not designed as the beginning of a conventional franchise. Robbie previously said the team had put everything it had into one movie rather than treating it as the first installment of a planned trilogy.

A new story may now exist. The deals required to tell it do not.

Ryan Gosling is also Marvel’s new Ghost Rider

Warner Bros. is negotiating for Gosling’s return as Ken just as the actor commits to another major franchise.

Marvel Studios officially announced at San Diego Comic-Con that Gosling will play Johnny Blaze in a new Ghost Rider movie directed by Shawn Levy. The film is planned for release in 2028, marking Gosling’s first superhero role.

The Marvel casting has not been identified as a cause of the Barbie standoff, and it does not prevent Gosling from returning as Ken. It does, however, mean Warner Bros. is attempting to secure him while another studio is building a major franchise around him.

There is also a wonderfully strange connection: Gosling’s longtime partner, Eva Mendes, starred opposite Nicolas Cage in the original 2007 Ghost Rider movie.

Ken is now Ghost Rider. Hollywood is a deeply unserious place.

What happens if Warner Bros. misses the deadline?

If Warner Bros. cannot complete the necessary agreements by December, the reported sequel rights would revert to Mattel.

Mattel could then pursue a new version of the property elsewhere, but it would not simply inherit Gerwig and Baumbach’s proposed story or the creative elements developed specifically for Warner Bros.’ film. That could mean starting again with a different studio, creative team and interpretation of Barbie.

For now, Barbie 2 has not been officially greenlit, canceled or recast.

Warner Bros. has a filmmaker with a story, three stars it wants back and several months to make the numbers work. After that, the future of Barbie Land may belong to Mattel again.