Barbie might not get released in several Middle East countries

It seems the Barbenheimer phenomenon is going to remain a uniquely American experience—and what is more American than pairing a toy movie with an atomic bomb movie anyway? Yesterday we reported that the Japanese arm of Warner Bros. had called out the main branch for engaging with a Barbenheimer meme (Oppenheimer still doesn’t have a Japanese release date, by the way, presumably for the obvious reasons), and now it seems like there are some countries in the Middle East that might not even be getting Barbie at all.

The issue, according to Variety, is that censors in some countries want edits made to “alleged LGBTQ-related narration and dialogue” in Greta Gerwig’s film, which Warner Bros. probably won’t agree to. Local distributor Vox Cinemas has pushed back the release of the film to the end of August, but if the studio doesn’t want to make those cuts then it might not be shown at all in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Egypt (among others).

That all being said, Variety notes that there isn’t much stuff in the movie that is “blatantly queer,” and Margot Robbie did tell Attitude that she figured none of the doll characters in the movie even have sexual orientations. If the “alleged” LGBTQ content isn’t the problem, though, Variety does add that various other Barbie things have been banned in Saudi Arabia because of the way they depict Barbie herself, with the article presenting the theory that the Gerwig movie is “too camp while also posing too great a challenge to traditional male authority.”

Whatever the real reason, it seems like Barbie will be joining a list of other recent-ish movies that didn’t get released in Middle East countries, including Lightyear, Eternals, West Side Story, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness, and Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.