Airline apologizes after showing R-rated Dakota Johnson movie on every screen during flight
Published on January 15, 2026 EDT

Qantas Airways, welcome to the Dakota Johnson stan army.

The Australian airline has issued an apology after playing an R-rated movie on every one of its personal screens amid technical difficulties on a flight from Sydney to Tokyo last week. Though the airline didn't confirm the title of the movie, the Washington Post reports that it was Daddio, the indie drama starring Johnson and Sean Penn that was released in June.

"The movie was clearly not suitable to play for the whole flight and we sincerely apologise to customers for this experience," a Qantas spokesperson said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. "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." The statement added, "We are reviewing how the movie was selected."

Jessica Kourkounis

EW has learned that the incident occurred after flight QF59 experienced a technical glitch that made individual entertainment selections impossible. The flight crew took several requests for a movie to play for the entire passenger section, and ultimately made its selection after several passengers asked for the movie. After the movie's graphic content became apparent, the flight crew first attempted to fix individual screens for passengers who did not wish to view the movie. Once that effort failed, the movie was switched to a children's movie for everyone on the plane.

Daddio is an intimate drama that plays out almost exclusively during one long cab ride, wherein the driver (Penn) offers sage advice to a young woman (Johnson) who's come to a crossroads in her personal life. While it's not a particularly graphic or disturbing movie, its plot does hinge on sexts exchanged between Johnson and her lover — an older, unseen married man whom she unfortunately refers to as "Daddy."

Those sexts include brief flashes of full-frontal male nudity and a woman's bare chest, though the movie's most sustained moments of graphic content come when we see the couple's erotic texting conversation, which consistently uses explicit language to describe sex acts.

Jessica Kourkounis

The film was written and directed by playwright Christy Hall, who also made waves this year for penning the screenplay for the Justin Baldoni-directed It Ends With Us.

Shortly before Daddio premiered at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival, Hall told Entertainment Weekly about Johnson's strength as a performer. "[She] brings a remarkable complexity to her character, skillfully excavating profound depths in ways that took this role to places well beyond what I had imagined," Hall said. "The end result makes it absolutely impossible to take your eyes off of her. From start to finish, you truly cannot divert your gaze. She embodies a character who is confident yet vulnerable. She seamlessly balances between being sexy and foul-mouthed while still maintaining an innocent softness. She also has this cheeky curiosity, a playful grace that permits this conversation to unfold, because her character isn’t afraid of the colorful personalities that roam the city of New York."

If you want to see what all the fuss was about, Daddio is still playing in select theaters, and is available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, and several other VOD platforms.

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