As Warner joins the Paramount Skydance collective, there’s talk of a renewed push for Barbie 2, while one Lord Of The Rings project has been put on hiatus. Paramount’s Venom-like absorption of Warner Bros hasn’t been formally completed yet, but it’s now such a formality that, per several reports, corporate overlord David Ellison is already ... Paramount-Warner merger: Barbie 2 being pushed through, Lord Of The Rings on hold
As Warner joins the Paramount Skydance collective, there’s talk of a renewed push for Barbie 2, while one Lord Of The Rings project has been put on hiatus.
Paramount’s Venom-like absorption of Warner Bros hasn’t been formally completed yet, but it’s now such a formality that, per several reports, corporate overlord David Ellison is already making a number of changes behind the scenes.
The first was, of course, the name: the corporate collective will operate under the banner of Skydance, though the Paramount and Warner names will continue to appear before opening credits for at least five years.
Next come some expected personnel changes.
Warner Bros film bosses Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca, who oversaw last year’s triumphs Sinners, Weapons and One Battle After Another, but also this month’s slightly less triumphant Digger, are said to be out. In their place come Paramount’s Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, who’ve already been busy looking through their own studio’s back catalogue for lucrative sequels to revive following its purchase by Skydance last year.
The hunger for audience-ready sequels and reboots means there’s also a renewed push for Barbie 2. You may recall that, while Barbie was one of 2023’s big hits, and that Warner Bros execs were keen for a follow-up, there was a major impasse over salaries.
Star and producer Margot Robbie, plus co-writer and director Greta Gerwig, were said to be happy with leaving Barbie as a stand-alone; Warner’s response was to keep offering them more money until they changed their minds. But as of August 2026, the studio’s then-boss David Zaslav dug his heels in over the sheer size of the deal, which was said to include roughly $20m for Ryan Gosling and roughly the same again for Gerwig.
What a difference a few weeks makes. Goldberg and Greenstein are already said to be in talks with the creative team behind Barbie, according to Variety’s reporting. There’s a ticking clock hanging over the whole enterprise – if a deal isn’t made by December, then the film rights revert back to toy manufacturer Mattel – but Skydance’s hunger for sequels means there’s fresh impetus in getting it signed off, even if it does mean spending tens of millions on salaries before a frame is shot.
“There’s no way Barbie 2 doesn’t happen,” says Variety’s source at the studio.
This doesn’t mean that Skydance isn’t showing some caution, however. According to Knight Edge Media (via World of Reel), a Lord Of The Rings film announced in March has now been put on pause. This was the one, you may recall, set to be co-written by US talk show host Stephen Colbert, and set 14 years after the original trilogy. Shadows Of The Past was said to be it’s title.
Although reports suggest the project isn’t dead entirely, the word is that it’s being put on hiatus until Andy Serkis’s The Hunt For Gollum comes out in 2027.
It’s all change at one of Hollywood’s biggest and oldest studios, then. While staff and certain projects face an uncertain future, there’s one thing we’re certain to see in the coming years: sequels and reboots – and lots of them.
