Friday, May 29, 2009

WB Listened

This was posted to FB members who joined a protest group.


First off, thank you for adding your name to the “Orphan” protest Group on Facebook. The membership has reached almost 1,000 in the course of just a few short days, which goes to show how very important this issue is to many.

I wanted to share with you that I just got off the phone with Scott Rowe, Sr. Vice President of Corporate Communication at Warner Bros. You will be happy to know that they have changed their marketing materials and have removed the offending statement “It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own” has been removed from all future trailers.

A few items of note:

• The current trailer (with the offending statement) will still be used during the previews of the horror film “Drag Me to Hell”, which opens this week-end. Unfortunately, on such short notice, there was nothing that can be done about this.

• The next movie that the trailer will be shown at is “The Hangover”, which comes out June 15th. By this time, the current trailer will be replaced with the new trailer (sans statement).

• They will swap out the trailers for all television advertising. They have not yet begun advertising for this film yet, so there should be no worries of children seeing it.

• The current trailer is still on the Web site, but they are working to rectify that immediately and Scott has spoken with the Warner Bros. Web team about this again this afternoon.

• Because the film is Rated-R, it will only be shown as a trailer for other Rated-R films. The trailer will also only be shown on television after 10 p.m. (i.e. not during times when young children would be expected to watch).

As I am sure many of you have assumed, there is a hook to the film that ultimately removes the child/orphan stigma, which is neither here nor there as it relates to current public positioning of the film -- and that issue is no more.

The producers and distributor took your concerns to heart and have made the changes in the public-facing marketing materials that we had hoped.

I would like to add that Scott mentioned that Warner Bros. employees get death threats for things as trivial as changing the release date of the new Harry Potter film. “Yet, the adoption community, who are protecting their children and who have every right to be angry, has been nothing but respectful.” he said.

Kuddos to all of you! Please do pass this information along so that others can know that their voice was heard.


-Bethann Buddenbaum & Jill Henry (Group moderators)

5 comments:

~ Alison said...

Cool!

Polar Bear said...

I read this email this morning. It is nice to see they are making changes.

I was telling some people at work today about this movie, and EVERYONE was appalled.

Thanks again for getting the word out about this.

Susan said...

You know--going to see "drag me to hell" was top on my priority list for the weekend! But now I will not go...again...if you go to watch any of that crap in the first place--you are probably going to watch some crappy previews too!

kitchu said...

that is awesome.

t~ said...

I saw this on FB, but had no idea what it was. I guess I should say kuddos to you for doing what you did. I certainly would have been just a tad offended to hear such a ridiculous statement about adoptive children.