Warner Brothers Pulls ‘Gangster Squad’ Trailer After ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Shooting Tragedy
After the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colo., on Friday, Warner Bros. has opted to pull the trailer for its coming film Gangster Squad from theaters.
A scene in the trailer depicts several men with tommy guns standing behind a movie-theater screen. The men open fire on the audience, and several filmgoers can be seen running panicked and being gunned down by the fire.
This scene is unnervingly similar to the real-world shooting in Aurora. James Holmes, 24, opened fire in a crowded movie theater at a midnight premiere screening of The Dark Knight Rises.
It is not known whether Warner Bros. will simply recut the trailer and re-release it in an altered form.
The Gangster Squad trailer was not playing at the Aurora screening of The Dark Knight Rises before the shooting, according to E! Online. While some have claimed Warner Bros. may pull The Dark Knight Rises from theaters, as well, E! has refuting those claims.
Gangster Squad stars Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, and Emma Stone, and tells the story of the Los Angeles Police Department's attempts to keep the East Coast mafia out of L.A.
The current situation follows a similar one associated with 20th Century Fox. In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, Fox changed the name of its coming Ben Stiller comedy The Watch and pushed its release date back by several months.
Warner Bros. appears to be pulling the Gangster Squad trailer from YouTube as well. It's still available on some accounts, but most versions of the trailer on YouTube have been removed by Warner Bros. on copyright grounds. The version linked below was active at press time.
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