The production of the upcoming Barbie movie required so much pink paint that it destroyed an entire company’s global supply. The production designer explained that “the world has run out of pink,” according to The Guardian.
The film’s production designer, Sarah Greenwood, explained that “the world ran out of pink” during the construction of Barbieland and the life-size versions of the “Doll’s Dream House”.
In an interview with Architectural Digest, director Greta Gerwig and the film’s production designer Sarah Greenwood talked about the construction of Barbieland, which is almost entirely fluorescent pink, from life-size versions of the famous “Dream House” of dolls to roads and lampposts.
In the interview, Greenwood, a six-time Oscar nominee, said the film caused an international shortage of pink paint.
“The world has run out of pink,” she told the magazine.
A representative for the company that makes the pink paint confirmed that the film “used the paint they had”, but qualified that production for Barbie coincided with wider global supply chain issues during Covid-19, as well as with the extreme weather in Texas in early 2021 affecting the vital materials used to create the paint.
The Barbie movie will be released on July 21st
“There was this lack and then we gave them everything we could – I don’t know if they can claim credit,” she said, but admitted: “They cleaned us up in the paint department.”
In the Architectural Digest interview, Gerwig stated that the shade of hot pink was important to “maintain the childishness” of the film’s aesthetic, and that Barbieland’s design was inspired by the Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings, the film “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” and by “An American in Paris”.
“I wanted the pink to be really bright, and everything to be almost too much,” Gerwig said, adding that she didn’t want to “forget what made her love Barbie when I was little.”
Set designers secured enough paint to allow production on the film, which was largely shot at Warner Bros Studios Leavesden in the UK, to continue.
Barbie, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the doll’s lover, also stars Will Ferrell, Simu Liu, Dua Lipa, Helen Mirren, Issa Rae, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera and Ncuti Gatwa. The film will release on July 21.
Editor: Bianca Chirilă
