Ads for gruesome horror film to be pulled
Last Updated: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 | 3:17 PM ET
CBC Arts
After being bombarded with complaints, producers for the upcoming horror film Captivity said Tuesday they will withdraw the current posters promoting their movie.
After Dark Films said it will remove the offending billboards and taxi ads, which have been up in Los Angeles and New York for about a week.
The ads, which are divided into four panels, depict the film's star — Canadian actress Elisha Cuthbert — apparently being abducted, confined, tortured and killed.
After Dark, its distribution partner Lionsgate Films and the U.S. Motion Picture Association received a myriad of complaints about the gruesome images, which turned up on about 30 billboards in Los Angeles and were also installed on more than 1,000 taxi-top ad slots in New York.
Lionsgate said it had no involvement with the ad campaign for the upcoming horror film.
After Dark CEO Courtney Solomon said in interviews that the wrong images were sent to the printer and that he and other members of his indie film company's executive board were at a trade convention last week, with no idea that the advertising had been posted.
Solomon denied that the release of offensive images had been a deliberate marketing ploy and said that the billboards did not give an accurate representation of the film.
"This movie is certainly a horror movie, and it's about abduction, but it's also about female empowerment," he told the Hollywood Reporter trade publication.
"We reshot the ending so the main character ends up in as much of a positive situation as the situation could allow. There is no rape or nudity in it, though it should be an R-rated movie."
Directed by Roland Joffé — whose credits include The Killing Fields, The Mission and Fat Man and Little Boy — Captivity follows in the footsteps of recent horror films that depict graphic physical and psychological torment.
The movie, set to hit theatres in May, is about a man and woman who awaken to find they have been kidnapped and must endure horrific torture.
