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Friday, March 30 2007
After what appeared to be a marketing campaign gone haywire, advertising for the upcoming movie Captivity will reportedly be removed today (Tuesday), following public complaints. The ads show a panel of photographs of actress Elisha Cuthbert being abducted, confined, tortured, and killed. Lionsgate, which is distributing the film, said Monday that After Dark Films, which produced it, had been given complete control over marketing materials. "Once aware of the materials and the reaction to them, we immediately asked After Dark to remove the billboards," the company said in a statement. Thirty billboards had gone up in Los Angeles, as well as 1,400 taxi tops in New York City. After Dark said that the wrong advertising material had accidentally been sent out without approval, since executives of the company had been attending the ShoWest convention in Las Vegas at the time. Today's Hollywood Reporter quoted sources close to the MPAA as saying that posting the ads without approval from the organization was "in clear defiance of MPAA rules and regulations." In an unprecedented action, the MPAA on Wednesday suspended the ratings process for 30 days for After Dark Films's horror flick Captivity after unapproved ads for it appeared on billboards and taxi tops in Los Angeles and New York. The film would then fall in line at the end of April with other films waiting for a rating, making it doubtful that it could receive a rating before its scheduled May 18 release. Referring to the unauthorized ads for the film, Marilyn Gordon, the MPAA's senior VP for advertising, said in a statement: "The sanctions in this case are severe because this was an unacceptable and flagrant violation of MPAA rules and procedures." 
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