The good news just keeps coming for Barbie fans in the UAE.
Now that the film has been approved to be screened by the UAE Media Council, it appears it will be showing a couple of weeks earlier rather than on its rescheduled date of August 31.
Vox Cinemas, Roxy Cinemas and Reel Cinemas have announced the Greta Gerwig-helmed film will be released on Thursday instead.
"The UAE Media Council has granted the Barbie movie the approval to be screened in the UAE’s licensed cinemas after completing the necessary procedures in line with the standards of media content and the UAE age classification," the authority announced late on Thursday evening.
Barbie was initially scheduled to be released on July 20 along with the rest of the world. However, early last month, cinema websites in the UAE changed the screening date to August 31. No explanation was given for the change.
Starring Margot Robbie in the titular role and Ryan Gosling as Ken, Barbie follows the pair as they set off on an adventure in the real world.
The record-breaking film also had the highest-grossing opening weekend for a film directed by a woman. It has already grossed more than $800 million at the global box office, setting it on track to be the next billion-dollar film.
“That's a crazy number,” Jeff Goldstein, distribution chief for Warner Bros, said last week. “There's just a built-in audience that wants to be part of the zeitgeist of the moment. Wherever you go, people are wearing pink. Pink is taking over the world."
Last month, a 3D video showing a giant Barbie walking out of her pink packaging and standing next to Burj Khalifa went viral on social media.
The video, created by a social media agency in Dubai, has been viewed more than three million times since it was posted on Instagram.
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GIANT REVIEW
Starring: Amir El-Masry, Pierce Brosnan
Director: Athale
Rating: 4/5
Company%20profile
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Under-21 European Championship Final
Germany 1 Spain 0
Weiser (40')
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Evacuations to France hit by controversy
- Over 500 Gazans have been evacuated to France since November 2023
- Evacuations were paused after a student already in France posted anti-Semitic content and was subsequently expelled to Qatar
- The Foreign Ministry launched a review to determine how authorities failed to detect the posts before her entry
- Artists and researchers fall under a programme called Pause that began in 2017
- It has benefited more than 700 people from 44 countries, including Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Sudan
- Since the start of the Gaza war, it has also included 45 Gazan beneficiaries
- Unlike students, they are allowed to bring their families to France
Groom and Two Brides
Director: Elie Semaan
Starring: Abdullah Boushehri, Laila Abdallah, Lulwa Almulla
Rating: 3/5
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
