Warner Bros’ Barbie sequel is in trouble – seemingly because boss David Zaslav doesn’t want to pay the director and stars too much money.

When Barbie became one of 2023’s most talked-about and acclaimed Hollywood films, it was inevitable that Warner Bros would begin pushing for a sequel.

Three years on, however, and Barbie 2 is still at an impasse – and now there’s only a matter of weeks left to get the project in motion, otherwise the rights to the franchise will revert back to Mattel.

The source of the problem, according to more than one report, is money. With the first film making over $1.4bn worldwide, Warner Bros has been in discussions with the filmmakers and stars that made it such a hit: Greta Gerwig, its co-writer and director, co-writer and partner Noah Baumbach, and leads Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

Warner Bros is said to have made multiple offers to that creative team, but several of them have been rejected so far. According to The New York Times and Variety's sources, however, a major sticking point in the negotiations has been Warner boss David Zaslav, who’s refused to sign off on a more recent offer because he thinks it’s too generous.

There isn’t a complete picture of how much everyone’s been offered, but the deal is said to include a slice of box office profits (hardly unusual) and a $20m salary for Ryan Gosling.

Sources appear to be divided over whether the scale of the offer is particularly astronomical or not. One insider told Variety that it amounted to “life -changing money”, which is rather vague. Another pointed out that, taken as a package of two bankable movie stars and a proven writer-director who’d just made a massive hit, it wasn’t an overly generous sum.

The surprising detail in this whole story is that, when deals were being made in the early days of the first Barbie movie, there was nothing written into the various contracts that obligated Gerwig or anyone else to make a sequel.

In the aftermath of Barbenheimer mania in 2023, Gerwig said she wasn’t interested in making a sequel – she went onto the Narnia movie, in production at Netflix. In interviews, Margot Robbie had also said that Barbie should be a stand-alone movie.

With director and star creatively unenthused about Barbie 2, Warner was left with no option but to keep making higher and higher offers. And now here we are in 2026, with David Zaslav digging his heels in and refusing to greenlight the latest deal.

Warner Bros now has until December to resolve the situation, otherwise its deal with toymaker Mattel expires. And if that happens, Mattel won’t be legally allowed to use any of the ideas or characters from Gerwig’s incarnation of the doll.

There’s a certain irony to Zaslav’s stance on the Barbie 2 situation. The director and stars may want a lot of money, but then Barbie made the company a lot of money. In 2025, Zaslav’s compensation package amounted to $165m. If Warner Bros merges with Paramount, Zaslav could make anywhere between $550m and $1bn.