The Upcoming ‘Barbie’ Movie Used Up One Company’s Entire Supply of Pink Paint

by Carmella D'Acquisto

The production design team on Greta Gerwig’s already-iconic upcoming film Barbie drained the global supply of a specific color of paint to bring the perfect pink paradise to life. According to Architectural Digest, the production designers Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer used so much pink in the Barbie dreamworld, that their supplier, Rosco, ran out of the nostalgic fluorescent shade.

“Maintaining the ‘kid-ness’ was paramount,” Gerwig told Architectural Digest. “I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much.”

Rosco was founded in 1910 and has collaborated with Hollywood producers for over a century. They provide sciencic paints, fog machines, color filters, lighting systems and other products that help to build the environment of a film. They have won four Academy Awards and one Emmy Award for their innovative products and techniques. But Roscoe leaders share that the Barbie production wasn’t the only reason they ran out of the hue.

The production designers were challenged to bring the Barbie Dreamworld to life on a set. According to AD, Gerwig used the phrase “authentic artificiality” to serve as a goal post when designing the world, which was built on set in England.

“There are no walls and no doors,” Gerwig told AD. “Dreamhouses assume that you never have anything you wish was private—there is no place to hide.” And the team created this illusion largely by hand, hand-painting the backdrop rather than CGI to capture the sky and the San Jacinto Mountains.

Lauren Proud, Vice President of Global Marketing at Rosco, told the Los Angeles Times that there were multiple circumstances that led to the Barbie production using up the entire reserve of the specific shade of pink, including supply chain challenges that arose during the pandemic and the Texas deep freeze of early 2021 that damaged a lot of materials that were used to create the paint, meaning the company was already short in supply.

“There was this shortage,” Proud told The Los Angeles Times. “And then we gave them everything we could– I don’t know if they can claim credit.” In another statement, she said, “they used as much paint as we had.”

Well we’re just tickled pink by this news! See all the beautiful sets in action for the release of the Barbie movie on July 21!

Top photo: screenshot of the Barbie Main Trailer from Warner Bros. Pictures Youtube

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