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With just about a month until the release of Barbie, Warner Bros. has begun to fully ramp up its marketing efforts, as evidenced by the recent press junket for the film that was held over the weekend.
The press junket, however, isn’t the only piece of Barbie marketing that’s been making headlines recently as the double-entendre French poster for the film has also received some media attention in recent days.
As pointed out by The Hollywood Reporter, the French poster for Barbie is actually a lot dirtier than the American one due to the fact that the word “Ken” has an entirely different meaning in France.
“The French version of the poster looks innocuous enough. It features star Margot Robbie as the pink-clad doll-come-to-life and Ryan Gosling as her blond sidekick Ken. But the French tagline: “Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c’est juste Ken” — meaning ‘She can do everything. He’s just Ken’ — has an NSFW double-entendre meaning in French slang, where ken is another word for “f***.” So the tagline becomes: “She knows how to do everything. He just knows how to f***.” [via The Hollywood Reporter]
Given that Barbie is only rated PG-13, however, this poster might lead to some French patrons being disappointed when they find out Margot Robbie won’t be doing any ken-ing in the movie.
In addition to Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, Barbie also stars Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Emma Mackey, Michael Cera, Simu Liu, Dua Lipa, Helen Mirren, Will Ferrell, and more. The film — directed by Lady Bird and Little Women filmmaker Greta Gerwig — will hit theaters in the United States on Friday, July 21.
Check out the official trailer for Barbie below: