Key Takeaways
- Skydance’s incoming leadership has started reaching out to Margot Robbie and LuckyChap to revive Barbie 2, with one source insisting, “There’s no way Barbie 2 doesn’t happen.”
- The sequel previously stalled because Warner Bros. had no sequel options in place and couldn’t finalize costly new deals with Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, and the original creative team.
- The push follows Barbie’s record $1.448 billion global run, as the Skydance merger reshuffles Warner Bros. leadership and expands Paramount executives Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein’s creative roles.
The door to Barbie Land may have swung open again. As Paramount Skydance prepares to close its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the incoming leadership team is already moving to revive Barbie 2, which stalled amid costly contract negotiations with Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Greta Gerwig, and the rest of the original film's creative team.
According to Variety, executives have begun reaching out to Robbie and her LuckyChap partners as part of an effort to maintain relationships with Warner Bros.' biggest talent—and one source familiar with the discussions put the sequel's prospects bluntly: "There's no way Barbie 2 doesn't happen."
The renewed movement comes during a sweeping overhaul ahead of the merger. David Ellison announced that the parent organization will be called Skydance, while Warner Bros., Paramount and HBO will retain their individual brands.
Paramount Pictures executives Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein are expected to take expanded creative roles overseeing film operations across the new company.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group chiefs Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca—the executives who had been trying to close the Barbie deals—are out.
"As we bring Paramount and Warner Bros. together, we wanted to preserve what has made each of these studios iconic," Ellison wrote in a memo to staff, as reported by Variety. "We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one."
He added that the company intends to pursue its ambitions with "passion, imagination and a willingness to take smart risks."
Apparently, one of the first priorities is making sure Warner Bros.' biggest movie ever doesn’t stay on the shelf.
The first Barbie, released in 2023, grossed $1.448 billion worldwide, becoming both the year's highest-grossing movie and Warner Bros.' biggest global release in studio history. Gerwig's film also collected eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, while Gosling earned a supporting actor nomination for playing Ken. Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For?" won Best Original Song.
The movie's pink-soaked marketing campaign and the simultaneous release of Oppenheimer also turned "Barbenheimer" into a full-blown cultural phenomenon.
But assembling the same team for Barbie 2 proved considerably more complicated.
Gosling was reportedly seeking a $20 million salary plus profit participation, while Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach reportedly wouldn't hand over their sequel concept until new deals were completed.
Abdy and De Luca previously said Warner Bros. had made "a series of big offers" but had been "unable to reach an agreement."
Robbie had also cautioned against treating a sequel as automatic. "This wasn't designed to be a trilogy," she said, adding that the goal was to make more movies with the kind of cultural impact Barbie had.
