Gruesome movie posters pulled after complaints

March 20 , 2007

Adapted from CNN.com

In the wake of a public outcry against Los Angeles billboards and New York taxicab tops advertising the upcoming movie "Captivity" with images of the abduction, torture and death of a young woman, the film's producer said it will take down the offending ads.

After Dark Films, its theatrical distribution partner Lionsgate Films and the Motion Picture Assn. of America (MPAA) received a barrage of phone calls objecting to the gratuitous depiction of the film's star Elisha Cuthbert being tortured and killed.

The billboards feature four frames with captions above each one. "Abduction" shows Cuthbert with a gloved hand over her face; "Confinement" features the actress behind a chain-link fence with a bloody finger poking through; "Torture" depicts Cuthbert's face, covered in white gauze, with tubes shoved up her nose; and "Termination" shows her with her head thrown back, seemingly dead.

The ads appeared on 30 Los Angeles-area billboards and 1,400 New York taxi tops. After Dark is paying to have them removed and, while some billboards in the Hollywood area were still visible recently, others already had come down.

Lionsgate said that it had no involvement with the ads, which were produced by Art Machine Digital, and that all the marketing for the movie was handled solely by After Dark.

"This film was done in association with After Dark Films. The nature of the association allows After Dark autonomy over their marketing materials, and therefore we neither saw nor approved this billboard before it was posted," said the head of investor relations at the studio's parent company, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. "Once aware of the materials and the reaction to them, we immediately asked After Dark to remove the billboards, to which they immediately and cooperatively responded."

After Dark said the posting of the billboards was an accident. The CEO said the wrong files were sent to the printer, who then passed them on to the billboard company without approval from any executives at After Dark. Executives from the indie production company were attending the ShoWest industry convention in Las Vegas last week and had no idea the wrong billboards were posted until they returned from the convention to a flood of e-mails and phone calls from angry parents and offended women.