- Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie opens in Japan on Friday.
- Barbie created controversy in Japan because of the Barbenheimer hashtag.
The Barbie movie has been super popular this summer, making more than $1 billion. Greta Gerwig, a female director, made history by achieving this. Lots of fans went to see the movie multiple times in theaters.
But in some places, like Japan, people are just now getting the chance to see it. Margot Robbie is the main star. There was some trouble with memes before the movie was released in Japan. Let me explain what happened.
Lots of tickets for Barbie are being sold in Japan. Luckily, the movie by Greta Gerwig came out during a holiday week, so many people went to see it.
But there was some trouble before the release. Some pictures called “Barbenheimer” upset people in Japan because they reminded them of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Warner Bros. posted these pictures on Twitter but then deleted them.
The pictures showed Margot Robbie with Cillian Murphy, who played Oppenheimer, along with pictures of nuclear explosions.
People got really upset about the pictures, and some even made a petition asking Warner Bros and Universal Pictures to stop using #Barbenheimer on social media.
In Japan, people started using #NoBarbenheimer instead. The Warner Bros division in Japan got mad at the U.S. part of the company and they had to say sorry. But even with all this trouble, fans in Japan still wanted to see the movie in theaters.
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