Warner Bros. Explains the Drawing That Got ‘Barbie’ Banned in Vietnam

Warner Bros. is responding to Vietnam's decision to ban Barbie from theaters.

Officials in Vietnam nixed the film over a map that appears on-screen showing the so-called "nine-dash line" in the South China Sea. China uses the dashed line to represent what it views as its historical control of the South China Sea, despite a 2016 United Nations tribunal that declared those claims were not valid under international law.

“The map in Barbie Land is a child-like crayon drawing,” a Warner Bros. Film Group spokesperson told Variety on Thursday. “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.”

The studio's statement comes just days after Vi Kien Thanh, head of the Vietnamese government entity that controls licensing and censoring foreign films, told the state-run newspaper Tuoi Tre, "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."

Philippine authorities are considering joining Vietnam in not showing Greta Gerwig's film in theaters, announcing on Tuesday that they are weighing their options.

"If the invalidated nine-dash line was indeed depicted in the movie Barbie, then it is incumbent upon the MTRCB to ban the same as it denigrates Philippine sovereignty," Senator Francis Tolentino told CNN Philippines. 

Barbie lands in American theaters on July 21.