Daniel Kaluuya is the Oscar-winning actor of such great movies for adults as Judas and the Black Messiah and Get Out. He’s one of the best young stars we’ve got. And apparently what he’s really interested in doing is making a movie based on Barney the Dinosaur.
Technically, this is not news. Back in the fall of 2019, it was first reported that Kaluuya was attached to a movie that would adapt the popular children’s show of the ’90s starring the perpetually cheerful purple dinosaur. Three years later, the movie has yet to materialize — but in a new profile of Kaluuya tied to his upcoming movie Nope, he says that the project is still happening.
Kaluuya told The Hollywood Reporter that the project “is still in early development and the script is being reworked.” Here is what he said about why the project appeals to him:
My last number of films have been so aligned to kind of what I stand for as a man. But there are a whole lot of things that I do as a man. I love kids’ films. How did everyone get into films? Watching kids’ films. I don’t want to restrict myself to the limitations of what I’m perceived as.
That basically syncs up with Kaluuya’s quotes about the project from back in 2019 when he said that Barney “was a ubiquitous figure in many of our childhoods, then he disappeared into the shadows, left misunderstood” and that he wanted to see if his message of ‘I love you, you love me’ can stand the test of time.”
I’m not sure what the audience would be for a serious reckoning with Barney’s simplistic message, but that does sound like a concept worthy of Kaluuya’s talents. Will we ever see this thing? Who knows.
What we do know is Kaluuya will next be seen in Jordan Peele’s Nope on July 22.
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