Barbie 2 is in crisis at Warner Bros. over being too expensive

Here we go again: Barbie 2 – which, let’s face it, ought to be the safest bet in franchise cinema right now – is apparently on the rocks at Warner Bros.. Not for any grand creative reason, but because of that age-old Hollywood sticking point: money. Feels a bit absurd, really, given the first film was the studio’s biggest ever. Let’s pick through what’s happening.

Warner Bros. set a company box office record with Barbie, which hauled in $1.5 billion worldwide.

The Money Fight

On one side of the negotiating table, you’ve got the returning dream team: writer-director Greta Gerwig, co-writer Noah Baumbach, producer and star Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling (you know, the other Ken). The lot of them want to be properly compensated for a sequel – and I do mean properly. That means hefty upfront pay rises and a chunky slice of the profits (aka 'back-end' points) for Gerwig, Robbie and Gosling. Worth noting: Robbie reportedly made around $50 million from the first film, so they’re hardly asking for spare change. Gosling is apparently after $20 million just for his return.

The studio – meaning Warner Bros. boss David Zaslav – isn’t just rolling over, though. Variety says they’ve made over half a dozen offers to the Barbie team in three years, but none of them have sealed the deal. So, what’s the hold-up? Unsurprisingly, it’s the numbers. WB apparently doesn’t fancy another situation like Joker 2, where big paydays weren’t exactly matched by big returns. But here’s the difference – Gerwig and Baumbach already know what they’re doing for this sequel.

The Clock's Ticking

This isn’t just your typical never-ending contract standoff, though. There’s a deadline lurking. If Warner and the key creatives don’t sort something in the next four months, the Barbie film rights shoot back to Mattel. Not only would that force a fresh start with new filmmakers (no using anything Gerwig came up with), but it’d mean yet another reboot. Like we need another half-baked plastic-fantasy universe no one asked for.

• If an agreement isn’t nailed down in four months, Warner Bros. lose the current Barbie film rights to Mattel, who’d have to start from scratch.

Meanwhile, the financial logic for a sequel is – or should be – bulletproof. The original cost WB about $145 million to make, then pulled in $1.5 billion and an armload of Oscar nods, plus a win for Best Original Song. You could double the budget for a sequel and still be left laughing all the way to the bank. Yet here we are, watching a corporate staring contest over, at most, $50 million. Even by Hollywood standards, that feels like a wild miscalculation.

It’s not as if Warner are short on risky gambles; the studio’s ploughed cash into the DC Universe after films like Supergirl landed with a thud, and Zaslav has canned completed projects like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme just for the tax breaks. Given the industry’s obsession with familiar properties and bankable stars, it’s downright bizarre to imagine Barbie 2 grinding to a halt over executive penny-pinching. Yet here we are.