Creating the perfect backdrop for the upcoming βBarbieβ movie required so much pink paint that it led to a global shortage, according to its production designer.
βThe world ran out of pink,β said Sarah Greenwood in a recent interview with Architectural Digest.
Greenwood, who has been nominated for six Academy Awards, including for the art direction of βPride & Prejudiceβ and βAtonement,β said constructing the set involved huge amounts of Roscoβs fluorescent pink paint.
Warner Bros.β live-action movie, which hits theaters on July 21, stars Margot Robbie in the titular role and a blond Ryan Gosling as her plastic boyfriend, Ken. (Warner Bros., like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
Greta Gerwig, who directed and co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach, told the magazine the color was all-important to the movie.
βMaintaining the βkid-nessβ was paramount,β she said. βI wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much.β
This was part of what Gerwig described as βliterally creating the alternate universe of Barbie Land.β
While Gerwig said she loved Barbie as a child, neither Greenwood nor set decorator Katie Spencer had ever owned one of Mattelβs iconic dolls. So the London-based team ordered a Barbie βDreamhouseβ online to spark their imaginations.
They took further inspiration from Palm Springs mid-century modernism. βEverything about that era was spot-on,β said Greenwood, adding that she strove βto make Barbie real through this unreal world.β
In an email to CNN, Lauren Proud, vice president of marketing and digital experience for paint company Rosco, confirmed that the production used a lot of the color but added that there were other factors involved in the squeeze on pink paint.
βThe sets were being developed during a time when we were still experiencing the global supply chain issues, and the paint supply was hit particularly hard,β she said. βWe delivered everything we could, they got it all. We canβt wait to see how it looks in the film!β