Commercials for an ultraviolent political satire called “The Hunt” have reportedly been pulled after the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings.
The movie features “elites” stalking and killing “deplorables,” a term Hillary Clinton called supporters of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“The violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum’s Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals,” the Hollywood Reporter writes. Blumhouse is the studio behind “The Purge” horror-satire series.
Over the Aug. 3 weekend, ESPN pulled an ad for the film that it had previously cleared, while AMC ran the spot during the season premiere of its drama The Preacher. It’s unclear whether the ads were identical, but the one yanked by ESPN opened with a sound resembling an emergency broadcast signal. A rep for ESPN parent Disney declined to comment on the move, but an ESPN source says no spots for the film will appear on the network in the coming weeks.
Actress Hilary Swank and Betty Gilpin from “GLOW” star in the movie, in which the elites hunt down a group of 12 “ordinary” Americans, or as the Reporter writes, “MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals.”
The Reporter says that one scene in “The Hunt” shows liberal characters picking their targets “because they expressed anti-choice positions or used the N-word on Twitter. ‘War is war,’ says one character after shoving a stiletto heel through the eye of a denim-clad hillbilly.”
Given the fraught political climate — particularly in the wake of the attack in El Paso, which was motivated by anti-immigrant bigotry — studio sources say Universal is evaluating its plans in what one called “a fluid situation.” A high-level insider says top executives want to stand by Blum, one of the studio’s most prolific and successful producers, as well as filmmaker Craig Zobel, and see the project as a satire addressing an issue of great social importance. But this person says plans could change “if people think we’re being exploitative rather than opinionated.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lqCjai8LDo
Not surprisingly, the “deplorables” end up turning the tables on the “elites,” and you can guess the ending.
