He loves you ... but do you still love him?

The fluffy pink dinosaur Barney was a staple of public television all through the 1990s and 2000s, as the title character on the long-running Barney & Friends series. The final new episodes were made in 2009, while reruns continue to air in various places on cable and online. He even got his own movie, Barney’s Great Adventure, in 1998. In the landscape of 2019, that means it is time for a reboot.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mattel Films has partnered with Daniel Kaluuya — best known as the star of films like Get OutWidows, and Black Panther — and his production company, 59%, to produce a live-action Barney & Friends movie. Here is Kaluuya’s quote on the news:

Barney was a ubiquitous figure in many of our childhoods, then he disappeared into the shadows, left misunderstood. We're excited to explore this compelling modern-day hero and see if his message of 'I love you, you love me' can stand the test of time.

I did not expect the man who played one of the most brutal movie characters of the last decade (Have you seen Widows? He’s incredibly terrifying in that movie!) to have such a strong emotional connection to Barney. But that just shows you how damn good of an actor he is.

Personally, I did not have this kind of relationship to Barney & Friends; that was a bit after my time, as they say. But I have two little kids now, and they love dinosaurs. They can’t even explain why, they just love them — even though dinosaurs are mostly mean and scary with big giant teeth. So I totally understand now, in a way I never did before, why Barney was such a phenomenon in the ’90s, and why a movie could be a huge hit with little ones today.

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