Warner Bros. Japan offended over official engagement with Barbenheimer meme

Two weekends ago, two new movies came out: Warner Bros. dropped Barbie, a comic fantasia about the iconic doll; and Universal released Oppenheimer, a serious biopic about the father of the atomic bomb.

Was it coincidence that these two films came out on the same day, or was Warner Bros. trying to screw over Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan, who used to make pretty much all of his films for Warner Bros. before leaving for Universal? As it ends up, everybody won, because the internet loved the idea of these two movies coming out together and went crazy making memes about the “Barbenheimer” double feature.

Both movies have since gone on to huge success, with Barbie even making a run to join the billion-dollar box office club. It’s hard to tell how much of that is thanks to Barbenheimer, but it couldn’t have hurt. Barbenheimer was the kind of serendipitous grassroots marketing push that movie execs dream of, since they don’t really have to do anything. Fans generated this buzz all by themselves, and the movies were there to catch their dollars.

Warner Bros. Japan targets Barbie Twitter account over “extremely regrettable” action

That said, not everyone thinks the Barbenheimer meme is cute and funny and cheeky. Take the nation of Japan, where Oppenheimer has yet to receive a wide release. That’s likely because the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had atomic bombs dropped on them in 1945, resulting in the deaths of between 129,000 and 226,000 people, per The A.V. Club.

For many people in Japan, the movie is opening old wounds, and they’re not eager to make light of it. When the official Barbie Twitter account retweeted a fan-made Barbenheimer poster with the cheeky message, “It’s going to be a summer to remember” (the tweet has since been deleted), Warner Bros. Japan posted a statement to the Japanese Twitter account for Barbie:

"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. 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."

At this point, I remind you that this is an arm of Warner Bros. criticizing an official Warner Bros. Twitter account for a movie that Warner Bros. itself made. So we’re looking at some inter-company strife here.

So did the flagship Barbie account overstep in engaging with the Barbenheimer meme? Ultimately, Warner Bros. didn’t create that meme; it was spontaneously created by fans and likely would have rolled on with or without the studio’s participation. I understand the impulse to engage with the buzz around your movie, but I also understand why people in Japan would see it as making light of a historic tragedy.

As of this writing, Oppenheimer does not have a release date in Japan.

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