Warner Bros global headquarters has apologised after its Japan office publicly complained that the US-based company was engaging with the “Barbenheimer” movement, which promotes a double bill of the apocalyptic Oppenheimer film and the lighthearted Barbie blockbuster.
There is a growing backlash in Japan against the conflation of Greta Gerwig’s playfully marketed movie with Oppenheimer, a biopic of the scientist behind the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.