Daniel Kaluuya Confirms His Barney Movie Will Be Darker Than the TV Show

Daniel Kaluuya hinted that his Barney movie will be a lot darker than the TV show. The Hollywood Reporter sat down with the NOPE star to talk about all the projects he’s got in the pipeline. During the chat, he mentioned that there was some basis in kids movie for his foray into the world of the purple dinosaur. Pointedly, he wondered why we look down on kids movies so much. Rightfully, it’s where a lot of film fans cut their teeth as consumers of the medium and then it spreads from there. A common thread for Kaluuya lies in the fact that each individual project really speaks to him as a person. Judas and the Black Messiah spoke to one part, Black Panther another section, even NOPE appeals to some of his action hero fantasies. All of them are part of the larger person bringing those images to the screen. Check out what he had to say down below.

“My last number of films have been so aligned to kind of what I stand for as a man,” Kaluuya said. “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.”

“I’ve never told you this, but when you reached out to me and we had that Skype, I was really disillusioned with acting. I had stopped acting for like a year and a half,” the actor told Essence recently. “I checked out, because I was just like, this isn’t working. I wasn’t getting roles, because racism and all this kind of stuff—so you reaching out was like, Okay, I’m not crazy. It’s proper. It’s going to be all right.”

When the question of not being in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever arose, the star gave a thoughtful answer. At the end of the day, it’s really about the fans when it comes to Marvel features. He didn’t want to ruin the surprise for them one way or the other.

“If I said anything, people would be really disappointed,” he offered. “That’s how I feel about it. I think people will be disappointed. They don’t want to be spoiled. They’re surprised in whatever will happen. That’s what was amazing about the first one.”

Are you excited to see what he and the creative team can do with Barney? Let us know down in the comments!