ELISHA CUTHBERT - STUDIO YANKS GRUESOME BILLBOARDS

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."

20/03/2007