She’s a Barbie girl, in a Barbie World. And that world is very, very pink.
Since portions of the Greta Gerwig-directed, live-action blockbuster “Barbie” are set in Barbie’s Dreamhouse in Barbie Land — also pink — the film’s designers needed a lot of pink paint. In an interview about creating the Dreamhouse, Gerwig told Architectural Digest that she wanted the color to be over the top.
“Maintaining the ‘kid-ness’ was paramount,” Gerwig told AD. “I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much.”
To construct all the Dreamhouse (which is on a studio lot in London), production designer Sarah Greenwood used a fluorescent-pink shade of Rosco paint. Greenwood admitted that her crew bought so much of this shade that for a time, you couldn’t get it anywhere else in the world.
“The world ran out of pink,” Greenwood told AD.
Lauren Proud, vice president of global marketing at Rosco, confirmed that “they used as much paint as we had” to make the Dreamhouse for the film in 2022. She told The Los Angeles Times that the company was also dealing with global supply chain issues, and the fact that a deep freeze in Texas had damaged some of the materials needed to make the paint. So, there was already somewhat of a shortage.
“And then we gave them everything we could,” Proud said — which was all of it.
It would be just like Barbie to inadvertently cause a shortage of pink paint, wouldn’t it? Based on the trailer for the film, Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) are living obliviously happy lives with giant, blow-out parties. Every day is “the best day ever,” but not everything is as it seems: One day Barbie wakes up with feet that aren’t naturally flexed into their usual, high heel-ready form. Bring on the existential crisis! They must travel to the real world to find out what’s going on.
Hijinks naturally ensue. “If this got out,” declares a hilariously angry toy company CEO played by Will Ferrell, “this could mean extremely weird things for our world.”
Yep, like running out of fluorescent pink paint.
Barbie will arrive in theaters on July 21.
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Check out Simplemost for additional stories.
