Quebec wants Lac-Mégantic footage cut from film
Quebec Cultural Affairs Minister Nathalie Roy has joined a chorus of voices in the province in demanding that Netflix remove footage of the 2013 train explosion that killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic from its blockbuster movie Bird Box.
In a letter in French sent to Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, Roy expresses the Quebec government’s “stupefaction and consternation” that the streaming company and its partners allowed the use of images of “the Lac-Mégantic tragedy ... purely for entertainment purposes.”
“As many Quebecers have already indicated, our government finds it hard to understand how a global giant like Netflix judged that it was OK to use the images in this context,” Roy says in the two-page letter. “This archival (footage) should never be used in ways other than for informational or documentary purposes.”
“Have you forgotten that parents edit out the Lac-Mégantic footage from Bird Box, according to Mayor Julie Morin.
The mayor had argued that use of the footage upset Lac-Mégantic residents, many of whom continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
A company in New York that specializes in stock video clips acquired the footage, and sold it to the producers of Bird Box. Jason Teichman, the CEO of Pond5, told The Associated Press that he is “devastated” by the way the footage was used, even briefly in the movie, and acknowledged that “we didn’t do all we could on our end to make sure that people understood the sensitive nature of the content.”
The footage was also shown in an episode of another Netflix production, Travelers, a Canadian sci-fi crime series. Producers of that series apologized and said they would edit out the images. aderfel@postmedia.com Twitter.com/Aaron_Derfel