The shooting that killed 12 and wounded
dozens more took place at a midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises"
in Aurora, Colo. on Friday.
Warner Bros. has walked a careful line since the tragic shooting that killed 12 and wounded 58 others at a midnight premiere of
The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colo. early Friday morning.
In the hours after the shooting, the studio canceled a red-carpet
premiere of the film in Paris, pulled a trailer for its upcoming release
Gangster Squad that showed men firing machine guns into a
movie theater, and released a brief statement saying the studio and its
filmmakers were “deeply saddened” by the event.
Director
Christopher Nolan issued a statement Friday afternoon on behalf of the cast and crew of
The Dark Knight Rises,
and Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway have since released statements of
their own. Warner Bros. did not release weekend box-office figures on
Sunday out of respect for the victims and their families, and Colorado
Gov. John Hickenlooper announced Tuesday morning that the studio, along
with Legendary Pictures, had made a large but undisclosed donation to
the Aurora Victim Relief Fund.
Recent reports also indicate that Warner Bros. will pull
Gangster Squad from a scheduled Sept. 7 release date and either cut or heavily rework the theater shooting scene.
Some have criticized the studio’s actions — particularly its decision to reshoot parts of
Gangster Squad.
The company has also kept a low profile since the shooting and has been
careful not to take steps that would potentially damage ticket sales.
But media outlets on the whole have applauded its efforts toward
sensitivity, and industry experts say Warner Bros. has responded swiftly
and well to a tough situation.
“I think they did the right thing,” said Dennis Rice, CEO of Visio
Entertainment and former president of marketing at Miramax Films
and head of publicity for Disney’s Buena Vista Pictures marketing
division. “It’s a very individual, circumstantial type of decision where
the people who made those decisions did it to be respectful to the
victims and their families, and to show America that we need to mindful
of this incident.”
The shooting in Aurora wasn’t the first time events in real life collided with ones depicted in films. Fox’s
The Watch, which hits theaters Friday, was originally called
Neighborhood Watch.
But that title became charged after neighborhood watchman George
Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., earlier this
year, and the studio announced in May that it had renamed the film.
After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Warner Bros. delayed the release of
Collateral Damage,
which cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as a firefighter whose family died in a
bombing, from October 2001 to February 2002. In the wake of Columbine,
some linked it and other violent crimes to influences of
The Matrix.
When such tragedies occur — at no fault of Hollywood, but nonetheless
eerily aligned with elements of current films — how should the industry
react? It would, after all, seem unrealistic to expect a studio to pull
its film from theaters in response to something beyond its control, as
though it were a car manufacturer that had released a faulty model.
Tony Angellotti, an entertainment public relations executive who
works on campaigns for major motion pictures, said the same techniques
apply as in any crisis situation.
“Things happen all the time, and how you deal with it and how quickly
you deal with it determines so much of what comes afterward,”
Angellotti said. “Sympathy, reaction, protest, whatever. If you’ve
handled it right, you’ve mitigated the negative reactions.”
A key factor for a studio to weigh in its response, Angellotti
says, is how a current issue could resurface with films for release down
the line. “They’re dealing with the situation now with an eye toward
the future as well,” he said.
Rice said the quickness of a response is important in these types of situations.
“One never anticipates that something like this is going to happen,
but that doesn’t mean that if it does, you don’t have to be prepared to
take an immediate course of action,” he said.
Despite the tragedy surrounding its release,
The Dark Knight Rises took in more than $160 million
in North America during its opening weekend, a sum that fell below
projections but still placed the film among the all-time top weekend
openers.
“There are so many movies you become attached to when I’ve literally
never even received a phone call or expressed interest. It was the same
way with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - I never even saw a script!”
