Ryan Gosling Is Producing a New Live-Action Flintstones Movie About Bamm-Bamm

Ryan Gosling is back at Warner Bros., though he will be working behind the camera this time.

Deadline reports that Gosling and his Open Invite producing partner Jessie Henderson are developing a live-action Flintstones movie centered on Bamm-Bamm Rubble. It is an early-stage project: Gosling is producing, not attached to star, and there is no writer, director, cast or release date yet.

It is a project in development, not a film ready to shoot yet, and that remains the basic picture.

The choice of Bamm-Bamm is a departure for a property that has usually put Fred Flintstone at the center. The cartoon character, best known as the super-strong kid with a club, has never been the focus of a live-action film.

A Flintstones Movie Without Fred at the Center

Deadline says the film would follow a grown-up Bamm-Bamm Rubble, the adopted son of Barney and Betty Rubble.

That leaves the new project outside the model of the two previous live-action movies. The 1994 The Flintstones centered on Fred and Barney, while the 2000 prequel The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas went back to their younger years.

That is useful territory for Warner Bros. A film about Bamm-Bamm can stay in Bedrock without simply recasting Fred, Wilma, Barney and Betty and asking audiences to revisit the 1994 movie with newer effects.

Hanna-Barbera has taken Bamm-Bamm beyond childhood before. The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, which ran in the early 1970s, followed teenage Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles Flintstone as they attended Bedrock High School, dated and formed a band called the Bedrock Rockers. There is no indication that the film will use any of that material. It does show that the next generation has been a workable part of the Flintstones world before.

It also separates Bamm-Bamm from a character known only as a child. The connection to the old cast is there, but it does not force the film into the same Fred-and-Barney story or the same comic dynamics.

Gosling and Henderson Are Producing

Deadline and TheWrap both report that Gosling and Henderson are producing through Open Invite. The film is in development at Warner Bros., and the producers are looking for a screenwriter.

No casting has been announced. Gosling’s name is likely to draw attention to the project, particularly after Barbie, but his involvement is on the producing side. He has become more active as a producer in recent years, and this gives Open Invite a very different studio property to work with.

The only concrete creative detail is the plan to make Bamm-Bamm the focus. Everything else, including who will write it, remains a development question rather than an announced decision. Until someone is hired, there is no script, no official plot and no clearer sense of which version of Bedrock the filmmakers want to build.

Live-Action Bedrock Has a Short History

Hollywood has only made two live-action trips to Bedrock.

The 1994 film starred John Goodman as Fred Flintstone, Rick Moranis as Barney, Elizabeth Perkins as Wilma and Rosie O’Donnell as Betty. It was a major commercial hit, even if reviews were much less enthusiastic. Six years later, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas arrived with an entirely new cast and a prequel story, but did not repeat the first film’s success.

Animated projects have continued since then, and other film and television ideas have surfaced, yet another major live-action theatrical movie has not reached the screen. The property has remained recognizable without finding a modern live-action identity that stuck.

A Bamm-Bamm-led story avoids an immediate comparison with Goodman’s Fred and creates some distance from both earlier films. It also means the filmmakers do not have to decide their take on every familiar adult character before they have established what this movie is.

What a Grown-Up Bamm-Bamm Opens Up

Bamm-Bamm comes with a familiar place in the Flintstones family, usually alongside Pebbles, without the weight of a defining live-action performance. An older version of the character could explore his prehistoric super-strength, his life in Bedrock and his place among the original family.

Those details have not been announced. There is no official plot or confirmed tone, no word on how much of the original family would be involved, and no indication that Gosling plans to appear on screen.

Warner Bros. has a recognizable world, a producer coming off major studio projects and a lead character who has not carried either of the earlier live-action movies. There is still a long distance between that and a finished film, but Bamm-Bamm gives the development team a less familiar starting point than another Fred Flintstone reboot.