The U.S. branch of Warner Bros. issued an apology after being called out by the Japan division for engaging with “insensitive” Barbenheimer tweets.
“Warner Brothers regrets its recent insensitive social media engagement,” the company told Variety on Tuesday, August 1. “The studio offers a sincere apology.”
The statement comes on the heels of Warner Bros. Japan’s Monday, July 31, request for the U.S. division to take “appropriate action” after the U.S. Barbie account “liked” and otherwise engaged with tweets about Barbenheimer, the pop culture portmanteau of blockbusters Oppenheimer and Barbie.
Oppenheimer — which details the true story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) development and design of the atomic bomb — has not been released in Japan. The United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 amid World War II; the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed over 100,000 people.
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“We consider it extremely regrettable that the official account of the American headquarters for the movie Barbie reacted to the social media postings of Barbenheimer fans,” Warner Bros. Japan said in a statement on Barbie Japan’s official Twitter account. “We take this situation very seriously. We are asking the U.S. headquarters to take appropriate action. We apologize to those who were offended by this series of inconsiderate reactions. Warner Bros Japan.”
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer were branded Barbenheimer due to the films’ wildly opposing plots and aesthetics — and their battle at the box office. (Both movies were released in the U.S. on July 21.)
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While the projects were sometimes billed as a double feature across the U.S. due to the cultural phenomenon, Barbie — starring Margot Robbie in the titular role and Ryan Gosling as the doll’s boyfriend Ken — ultimately bested Oppenheimer at the box office nearly twice-over, raking in $162 million opening weekend.
While Barbie has been nearly universally beloved by audiences and the world at large, the pink-tinted film has not been without its detractors, who felt targeted by the movie’s feminist themes and progressive narrative. Controversial public figures like Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro publicly slammed the film, with Cruz, 52, calling it “communist propaganda” and Shapiro, 39, creating a 40-plus minute video of himself trashing the movie and burning Barbie dolls.
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Whoopi Goldberg, for her part, did not take their critiques lightly.
“It’s a movie! It’s a movie about a doll!” Goldberg, 67, exclaimed incredulously on The View on July 25. “You guys, I want y’all to tell your daughters why you’re not taking them to the Barbie movie. I want you to explain to them what’s wrong with Barbie.”
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Gerwig, 39, meanwhile, had a more diplomatic reaction when asked about the backlash. “Certainly, there’s a lot of passion,” the director told The New York Times in an interview published late last month that was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike. “I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people.”
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