Warner Bros. is heading back to Bedrock, and this time it’s in live action.
Ryan Gosling and his Open Invite producing partner Jessie Henderson are in early development on a live-action Flintstones movie at the studio, one built around a grown-up Bamm-Bamm Rubble, as first reported by Deadline and confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter.
The project is out looking for a writer, and that’s about all that exists right now: no plot details, no director, no date, and no word on whether Gosling steps in front of the camera or stays behind it as producer.
Given the man just played Ken, a super-strong blond guy in animal print doesn’t feel like much of a stretch, but nobody is saying it yet.
A Live-Action Movie About An Adult Bamm-Bamm
Bamm-Bamm is the adopted son of Barney and Betty Rubble, the impossibly strong kid next door who spent the original 1960s Hanna-Barbera series swinging a club bigger than he was.
The character has been aged up before — he was a Bedrock High teenager in 1971’s The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, and the later animated specials married him off to Pebbles Flintstone — but a live-action feature centered on the adult version is new ground for the franchise.
Live-action Bedrock itself is not.
Universal’s 1994 The Flintstones, with John Goodman as Fred, Rick Moranis as Barney and Steven Spielberg executive producing, pulled in $340 million worldwide, and the 2000 prequel The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas followed without the original cast.
More recently, Fox spent years developing Bedrock, an animated sequel series with Elizabeth Banks voicing an adult Pebbles, before it quietly died in development.
Gosling, meanwhile, keeps stacking franchise plays: he leads Star Wars: Starfighter, which opens May 28, 2027 from director Shawn Levy, and Marvel has his Ghost Rider movie dated for July 28, 2028.
Now add a Hanna-Barbera reboot to the pile.
What About The Animated Flintstones Movie and Barbie sequel?
Fans might wonder how this fits with the animated Flintstones movie Warner Bros. already has in development.
Short answer: it doesn’t have to, because they’re two different movies, at two different divisions.
Warner Bros. Pictures Animation — the theatrical animation unit run by Bill Damaschke — has Meet the Flintstones from directors Todd Wilderman and Hamish Grieve, which screened first footage of Fred and Barney racing the famous foot-powered car at Lightbox Expo back in October 2024, with Wilderman pitching it as a mix of “silliness and emotion.” That one is the family toon.
The Gosling project is live-action and about an adult Bamm-Bamm. Warner Bros. is simply working the Hanna-Barbera library from both ends, and there’s room for both.
One more piece of context worth having: the announcement landed the same afternoon Warner Bros. said goodbye to longtime animation boss Sam Register, and it all sits under the Paramount takeover fight still grinding toward a close.
A writer search is the kind of cheap development the current regime can move on its own — the real greenlight on a live-action Flintstones lands on the next owner’s desk.
It’s also been reported that talks for a Barbie sequel have been underway, butZaslav doesn’t want to fork out all the dough. If he doesn’t by December, WB loses the rights and Mattel shops elsewhere.
