A fleeting image of a geographic map of Southeast Asia showing disputed borders was enough to get Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Barbie” banned in Vietnam. Meanwhile, in France, seemingly innocuous marketing messaging for “Barbie’ can have a naughty meaning (double entendre, anyone?).
Instead of the usual domestic analysis, here are some overseas marketing developments of note:
The PG-13-rated “Barbie” premieres July 22 via Warner Bros. Pictures, which licensed the beloved toy character for a live-action theatrical film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
* Sony Pictures animated “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is a big hit in India, because a supporting character in the animated movie is viewed as the first superhero from that Asian territory.
* Netflix is threatening to pull original programs from the United Kingdom, if streaming video content becomes subject to more extensive content regulation, which is under discussion.
* China boxoffice re-emerged as large for Hollywood imports, but it’s uneven as, for example, the latest “Indiana Jones” stumbled.
After the Vietnam block announced July 3, the Philippines said it might do the same. In both cases, the objectionable map in the movie supports China’s aggressive maritime border claims around the China coastline that are outside international norms. For Vietnam and other countries, objections are a matter of asserting national sovereignty.
In the “Barbie” movie, the map is a backdrop to a discussion of the Barbie character traveling into the real world, versus Barbieland.
For years, Hollywood seems to kowtow to China avoiding touchy subjects and presenting China in a favorable light, for fear of losing financial benefits from access to the Asian giant’s cinemas and other media outlets. Recall Paramount Pictures’ “The Martian” sci-fi yarn in 2015 presented China as playing savior to help rescue an American astronaut.
Meanwhile, it’s asserted that Warners’ marketing messaging in France can be interpreted as slyly saying in French slang meaning that the movie’s Ken character knows how to fornicate.
Says an article in the Hollywood Reporter by Scott Roxborough, “The French version of the poster looks innocuous enough. It features star Margot Robbie as the pink-clad doll-come-to-life and Ryan Gosling as her blond sidekick Ken. But the French tagline: ‘Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c’est juste Ken’ — meaning ‘She can do everything. He’s just Ken’ — has an NSFW double-entendre meaning in French slang, where ken is another word for ‘fuck.’ So the tagline becomes: ‘She knows how to do everything. He just knows how to fuck.’”
Elsewhere, in India, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” is smashing boxoffice records in India and generating unusual fervor because it features a character thought to be the first Indian superhero to appear in an American blockbuster,” write Robbie Whelan and Vibhuti Agarwal in the Wall Street Journal.
“The animated character is Pavitr Prabhakar, a web-swinging, chai-sipping fellow whose name is a play on Peter Parker, the teen behind the original Spider-Man mask,” the WSJ article says. “Pavitr is new to many U.S. viewers — but here he is a long-dormant Indian comic-book hero many know from childhood. He is considered the Indian Spider-Man.”
Another overseas happening is that Netflix pushing back at suggested legislation in the United Kingdom that would regulate content of streamers like Netflix in the same way as legacy TV, such as the British Broadcasting Corp. That means that a UK regulator could fine streamers £250,000 ($310,000) for carrying harmful content; given original streaming programing from Netflix, Amazon Prime and Paramount+ is more freewheeling, fines over content could pile up and change the direction of successful programing.
“Netflix has threatened to preemptively remove films and TV shows from its UK library to avoid falling foul of new streamer regulations being introduced by the British government,” says a Deadline article by Jake Kanter. Original movies as well as TV shows could get the hook.
Back to China, the Asian territory blossomed into a major cinema market for Hollywood in the past quarter century, but it’s been a bumpy ride. Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” flopped in its China opening. That’s a blow given that the adventure yarn starring Harrison Ford reportedly cost $295 million to make.
China surpassed the U.S./Canada (the domestic market) a few years ago in total return (stripping out closures during the pandemic) to becoming the world’s largest. But it’s less lucrative to Hollywood when drilling down because of heavy-handed regulation and robust competition from local films.
Another factor in diminishing value to Hollywood is the distributor cut of boxoffice at around 25 cents on every dollar in China is half that of the domestic market (50 cents or more go to distributors). The 25 cents cut is the lowest in the world. Further, overseas generally is a patchwork of territories, so marketing costs are higher than the homogeneous domestic marketing.
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