Movie News

"Captivity" Posters Pulled Following Complaints

Another day, another dunderheaded movie ad campaign. Last month it was the "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" bomb scare debacle in Boston. Now it's adverts for the new Elisha Cuthbert vehicle, "Captivity."

As if you couldn't guess from the title, IMDB describes the movie's plot as being about a male/female couple who "awaken find themselves captured in a cellar. As their kidnapper drives them psychologically mad, the truth about their horrific abduction is revealed." So basically what we've got here is a cross between the "Saw" concept and, apparently, "I Spit On Your Grave."

Billboards in LA and taxi cab toppers in New York City feature four illustrations of Cuthbert in advancing stages of her predicament, with the titles "Abduction," "Confinement," "Torture," and "Termination." The man isn't shown.

Following numerous complaints, the ads are in the process of being removed at the expense of After Dark Films, the production unit in charge of promoting the movie; Lionsgate will be the distributor. The ad campaign was put together by Art Machine Digital, a firm that was commissioned by After Dark.

Here's my favorite part of this story: After Dark CEO Courtney Solomon claims the entire ad campaign was an "accident" stemming from the wrong files being sent to the printer. "Personally, I wasn't going to go with this campaign," Solomon is quoted as saying.

I'm sorry, but I work in the publishing industry, and I know about the proofs process. Nothing ends up in public until it's been signed off on at least twice by some responsible party. That leaves only one logical explanation: Solomon and his team are getting exactly the kind of controversial attention for his film that he intended with this move--a motive he, of course, denies.

Source: CNN.com.

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Posted by on March 20, 2007 11:14 AM
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