The Japanese opening of hit “Barbie” faces further setbacks amid an online petition gaining momentum calling on two Hollywood production companies to disavow a marketing move that uses images of nuclear explosions.
The change.org petition has collected more than 16,000 signatures over the two days through Thursday and calls on Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures, which produced the biopic “Oppenheimer”, to stop hashtag “Barpenheimer”, which combines Barbie’s name with Oppenheimer’s name. It helped the movie become a huge international hit.
Barbie, starring Margot Robbie, has grossed more than $800 million worldwide.
Oppenheimer also grossed over $400 million and is set around nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer premiered around the same time last month.
Warner Bros. initially promoted jokes (memes) posted by fans that depicted actress Robbie and actor Cillian Murphy alongside images of nuclear explosions.
But this was not well received by fans in Japan, which will be greeted in the coming days by the memory of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two atomic bombs 78 years ago.
The hashtag #No to Barbenheimer went viral on the Internet and was retweeted more than 100,000 times, prompting Warner Bros. Japan to issue a rare public criticism of its parent company and an apology a week later.
Mitsuki Takahata, who voices Barbie in the Japanese-dubbed version, wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday that she was upset when she found out about the posts and considered pulling out of a promotional event in Tokyo ahead of the film’s Aug. 11 opening.
“It’s very, very frustrating,” she said.
On the same day, the US ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emmanuel, published a picture of his meeting in Tokyo with Greta Gerwig, director of the Barbie movie, but the interaction on the Internet was lukewarm.
A spokesman for the embassy said that Emmanuel took his wife, daughter and their friends to see the movie (Barbie) and that he embraces the film’s message about women’s empowerment.
A date has not yet been announced in Japan for the movie “Oppenheimer”, which chronicles the creation of the atomic bomb.
The film was criticized for largely ignoring what this weapon did to Japan before the end of World War II, which destroyed two major cities and caused more than 200,000 deaths.
