Barbie Movie Used So Much Pink Paint That It Apparently Caused an International Shortage

Greta Gerwig’s live-action Barbie movie is very, very pink. So pink, in fact, that it caused an international paint shortage.

This is according to Architectural Digest’s interview with production designer Sarah Greenwood, who said that Gerwig’s desire to have a completely pink set had some funny “consequences.”

The world ran out of pink

“The world ran out of pink,” Greenwood said.

She wasn’t exactly, either. Greenwood claimed the amount of paint needed to match Gerwig’s vision led to an international shortage of fluorescent Roscoe paint. 

According to Gerwig, Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer, the sets employed the heavy use of pink paint in lieu of CGI most of the time.

“I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much,” Gerwig recalled. 

“The scale was quite strange,” Spencer said.

She and Greenwood had to build the set so that everything was 23 percent smaller than typical size. Gerwig was pleased. “The ceiling is actually quite close to one’s head, and it only takes a few paces to cross the room. It has the odd effect of making the actors seem big in the space but small overall,” the director remarked.

Barbie has captured attention ever since Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were first revealed in the iconic roles. Anticipated has continued to grow through the release of its first trailer, which shows Robbie as a Barbie girl who’s out of her Barbie world It is scheduled to hit theaters on July 21.

Hayden Mears is an entertainment journalist who enjoys (you guessed it) entertainment. He also likes fitness boxing and writing bios in the third person, for whatever that’s worth.