Whether or not it was Ben Affleck’s call we don’t know, but his directorial debut Gone Baby Gone has been pulled from release in the U.K. by Buena Vista International because of similarities to the case of the missing four year old girl Madeline McCann.
The movie was set to open in the final week of December but it has been ’suspended indefinitely’ with no word on when the studio will deem the climate to be ok to release their film in Britain says Variety.
It was a difficult situation to be in sure but I guess no harm is done in delaying what is looking to be a superb film. Come back mid 2008 when the dust has hopefully settled and screen your movie then, it’s not like it will make that much difference to the U.K. box office.
I still think there is a little bit of over-reaction here because the story is based on a book… it has nothing at all to do with the case of missing Madeline (despite the actress who plays the girl who gets kidnapped due to her mother’s neglection actually being called Madeline and having a similar resemblance in look) and is just one of those bizarre coincidences in life.
It’s that mute point isn’t it. How much time can pass until it’s ok for someone to make a joke about 9/11 for example. That kind of thing. Maybe and (in my opinion hopefully) it’s never ok to joke about something like that but I do think we should always stand up to our problems and deal with the truth of situations in real life and the truth is… these things happen.
This movie is FICTIONAL but it is the kind of thing that happens. It should not have to be locked away in some vault somewhere because of it’s subject matter because then as I always say, what about rape, murder, suicide and everything else.
Those things happen everyday too, to someone out there. Should all movies depicting those events be delayed too?
Why people can’t separate fact from fiction is just beyond me.
3 Comments
This reminds me of something similar that happened in Germany after the Tsnuami catastrophe in 2005.
Some radio stations pulled off a song by the German band Juli, ‘Perfekte Welle’ which means the perfect wave, although the song was out long before the tsunami happened!
The call has been made and while I don’t like censureship I think that for the good of the film it was the right decsion, as it would not in my view have done good business in the UK. Having the girl in the film called Madeline is too much of a concidence that can’t be ignored. Look at times some things are more important then film and maybe in a 6 months a year the film may be OK to release. Its probebly a commericial decsion as much as anything.
It’s an overreaction but understandable given the way the tabloids would have covered the movie had it been released – better to release it one the McCann case has been solved. However, I do hope that the tabloids don’t mistakenly attack the movie forced copying the case when it does come out.