‘Barbie’: Warner Bros issues statement days after Vietnam bans movie over South China Sea map

Days after Vietnam banned Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling starrer ‘Barbie’ over South China Sea map, Warner Bros issued a statement and said the map in the upcoming movie is ‘child-like’ drawing with no intended significance.

In a statement, Warner Bros said, ‘The map in Barbie Land is a whimsical, child-like crayon drawing. The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the real world. It was not intended to make any type of statement.’

‘Barbie’ was originally scheduled to release in Vietnam on July 21, the same date as in the United States, according to the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper.

Vietnamese authorities banned the domestic distribution of the movie over a scene of the map that shows China’s unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea, state media reported.

‘We do not grant license for the American movie Barbie to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line,’ the newspaper reported, citing Vi Kien Thanh, head of the Department of Cinema, a government body in charge of licensing and censoring foreign films.

Vietnam has also opened an investigation of the website of K-pop group Blackpink’s tour organiser, ahead of the group’s concert in Hanoi, over criticism from fans that it shows a map of the South China Sea with disputed boundaries.