HOLLYWOOD — The word “sensitivity” isn’t one that usually gets a lot of play where Hollywood is concerned.
So it was interesting to see how the movie industry was going to deal with the Colorado shooting.
There’s obviously a tricky balance to consider — if the perception by the media and general public is that the steps you’re taking aren’t sufficient, then you’re going to be accused of being cold and callous and concerned only about salvaging your box office receipts.
Then again, if you appear to be overcompensating, the perception could be that you might be assuming some of the blame for what happened.
The first bit of business from Warner Bros., the studio behind
was to issue a statement extending sympathies to the families of the victims. Their second move was to announce that they were withholding revealing
box office data until the end of the weekend out of respect to those victims.
On Monday, in addition to releasing those figures, it was revealed that it will be making an undisclosed but “substantial” donation to a program that funds charities in support of the Colorado victims.
The studio also pulled the trailers for its upcoming crime thriller from theatres, which i ncluded a sequence where a bunch of mobsters opened fire on an audience from behind a movie screen.
It isn’t the first time Warner Bros. has found itself having to realign its marketing plans in the face of a tragedy.
In t he aftermath
of
t he 2011 earthquake in Japan, the studio pulled Clint Eastwood’s
from Japanese theatres because of a vivid tsunami sequence.
A decade earlier, Disney’s Touchstone Pictures pushed back from its original Sept. 21, 2001 release date because it involved the smuggling of a WMD aboard a plane.
Looking ahead, it will be i nteresting to see if 20th Century Fox encounters any friction surrounding this weekend’s release of an edgy neighborhood watch comedy, so close in proximity to the events surrounding the Treyvon Martin killing.
In an industry where timing is everything, current events could have Hollywood under the gun.