Barbie will soon be entering it’s third weekend of release, and has already spent its first two in the spotlight. It shattered records upon release, and is now well on its way to crossing the billion dollar mark, which would make it the second of this year to do that. The first to was Super Mario Bros., from Illumination.
While the film is going strong in the US, it’s facing backlash in the Middle East, and may not even see a release in some territories there at all. It was originally slated for a July 19th release date, 2 days before the US release, but has now been pushed back to August 31st.
The reasoning for this pushback, according to Variety, is that Warner Bros. is currently working on edits for the film, requested by censors focusing on LGBT narration and dialogue. Many of the edits, however, is highly unlikely to be approved by the studio, so the movie about Mattel’s famous doll may not even see the light of day in United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the regions top market.
Despite the film having openly LGBT stars, the main lead, Margot Robbie, has stated that the movie itself doesn’t tackle anything related to sexual orientation, even saying that the dolls don’t “actually have sexual orientations.”
This would not be the first time that Barbie herself has seen pushback in the Middle East, however. Going back a decade, several straight-to-DVD movies were made about Barbie, that went on to be banned in the Middle East, due to racy clothing, and portraying women in non-traditional gender roles.
Barbie is now playing in theaters, and stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
UPDATE – Barbie will now be playing in Saudi Arabia and other territories throughout the Middle East. It is unclear what censors and edits were made. It has also not been revealed if Mattel and/or Warner Bros. took part in the edits.
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