Universal halts marketing for its "evil elites hunt regular folks with guns" movie The Hunt

You’d be forgiven for not knowing this, but there are actually a lot of downsides to waking up every day in a never-ending nightmare of gun violence and rising white supremacy, and not just the really obvious ones. For instance: It sometimes makes movies about people shooting each other very difficult to market. (Also: All the murders.)

Deadline reports that Universal has had to refocus its thoughts and prayers this week re: its new Blumhouse film The Hunt, which sees a bunch of rich, liberal-coded “elites” (led by Hilary Swank) get together to hunt poor, hard-working red-staters, including GLOW’s Betty Gilpin. (Don’t worry: She fights back.) The film’s intentionally divisive, highly politicized trailer, which plays up the difference between the good, salt-of-the-earth victims and the rich assholes who don’t even see them as human, presumably seemed like a more fun idea a week (or, as it’s now known, “two mass shootings”) ago.

As such, Universal has now pledged to pull all marketing materials for the movie from the internet, TV, and physical advertising—although it’s still planning to release it in theaters on schedule on September 27. The move is reminiscent of a number of other times Hollywood has had to respond to life imitating the shittiest aspects of art (and also one pretty cutting BoJack Horseman episode), including the delay and alteration of several films after 9/11, the rescheduling of the Death Wish movie after 2017’s Las Vegas shootings, and the Buffy episode that was pulled out of rotation after Columbine. (Happy 1999 Week, folks!)

The Hunt is directed by Compliance’s Craig Zobel, from a script by Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse.