There is nothing like controversy to drive marketing of a movie.
Last week at the annual ShoWest confab, Lionsgate distributors along with their production partner After Dark Films, had on display four posters for their new movie ‘Captivity’ opening May 18.
Subsequently, the four images of the film’s star Elisha Cuthbert appeared on billboards in LA and on New York taxicabs.
In the wake of public dismay over the images – Lionsgate has withdrawn them.
Four different images were portrayed "Abduction" showed Cuthbert with a gloved hand over her face; "Confinement" featured the actress behind a chain-link fence with a bloody finger poking through; "Torture" depicted Cuthbert's face, covered in white gauze, with tubes shoved up her nose; and "Termination" showed her with her head thrown back, seemingly dead.
Lionsgate denied having anything to do with the ads, laying blame on After Dark Films.
After Dark claimed, the posting of the billboards was an accident. CEO Courtney Solomon 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.
"Personally, I wasn't going to go with this campaign. I thought it was OTP (over the top)," Solomon is reported as saying. "Nothing like this can ever happen again."
Solomon added that the images on the billboard are not an accurate representation of the film, which stars Cuthbert as a woman who awakens to find herself being held in a cellar.
"This movie is certainly a horror movie and it's about abduction, but it's also about female empowerment," Solomon said. "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. For the audience it's made for, it's satisfying to that audience. I'm sure that's not the same audience that's complaining about the billboards."
Solomon also denied that the production company deliberately placed the billboards and posters to generate publicity by generating controversy.
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