Airline apologizes for playing R-rated Dakota Johnson movie on every screen

Qantas has apologized after an R-rated Dakota Johnson movie was shown to all passengers on a flight from Sydney to Tokyo.

All passengers on the Qantas flight to Haneda were shown the beginning of Daddio, a sexually explicit 2023 film starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn.

The movie is rated R in the United States for “language, sexual material, and brief graphic nudity,” and MA15+ in Australia for “strong coarse language and nudity.”

Due to technical issues, individual movie selection wasn’t available. After some passengers requested it, the crew decided to play the film for the entire flight. However, once passengers realized the movie’s content, the crew stopped it and replaced it with a children’s film.

“The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologize to customers for this experience,” a Qantas spokesperson told The Guardian.

“All screens were changed to a family-friendly movie for the rest of the flight, which is our standard practice for the rare cases where individual movie selection isn’t possible. We are reviewing how the movie was selected.”

According to a post from a Reddit user who claimed to be on the flight, the drama movie included not only graphic nudity but also “a lot of sexting – the kind where you could literally read the texts on screen without needing headphones.”

“It took almost an hour of this before they switched to a more kid-friendly movie, but it was super uncomfortable for everyone, especially with families and kids onboard,” said the post, which had photos of the explicit texts shown in the film, and noted that passengers couldn’t pause or turn off their screens.

The airline stated that cabin crew apologized to the passengers, “particularly those who had complained about the content,” and will follow up with them.