Warner Bros. Film Group in the United States has issued an apology and said it would remove tweets that have caused offense in Japan in recent days.
As previously reported, the Barbenheimer craze of recent weeks has seen plenty of fan art and memes spreading about online mashing up Warners’ “Barbie” movie with Universal’s “Oppenheimer” – two films with very different subject matter and tone.
The U.S. social media account for “Barbie” liked and shared some of the images. Doing so has drawn an enormous amount of backlash from Japanese users complaining about its insensitivity. It got to the point that #NoBarbenheimer has been trending on Japanese Twitter over the last couple of days.
The official Japanese “Barbie” account issued a statement, viewed on Twitter nearly 30 million times, calling the actions “very regrettable” and said they “lack consideration”. They asked Warner Bros. U.S. to take appropriate action.
Late last night, Warner Bros. Film Group in the U.S. responded, issuing its own apology and said it would remove the offending tweets. Their statement reads: “Warner Brothers regrets its recent insensitive social media engagement. The studio offers a sincere apology.”
Whilst the apology was appreciated, many remain angry about the original posts and the comments from the U.S. “Barbie” account.
All of this is taking place ahead of the release of “Barbie” in Japan on August 11th, and just days before the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th.
“Oppenheimer” has yet to be given a release date in Japan.
Source: Deadline
