French terrorism thriller Made in France delayed after Paris attacks

PROVOCATIVE posters for a film set to be released soon in France now appear to be in horrible taste.

THE striking posters plastered across metro stations and buses in Paris this week were always provocative, but after Friday’s attacks, they appear in the worst possible taste.

They show an AK-47 assault rifle superimposed over the Eiffel Tower alongside the tagline: “The threat comes from inside.” The confronting image is the centrepiece of a promotional poster for Made in France, a thriller about terrorism that was supposed to open in French cinemas next Wednesday.

The artwork had already raised eyebrows, and after violence tore through the city, distributor Pretty Pictures and producer Radar Films announced the film’s release would be postponed. It is the second time the movie has been delayed this year, after its original release coincided with the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in January.

SND Distribution pulled out of the project after the deaths at the satirical newspaper’s headquarters sent shock waves through France. And it looks like this movie is doomed to fail.

The spookily prescient tagline reads: “The threat comes from inside.”

It includes harrowing scenes that are painfully close to reality, including one where Muslim terrorists shoot at French police and storylines about homegrown extremists being radicalised.

Director Nicolas Boukhrief can at least take comfort in the fact this is not the first movie to suffer from unfortunate synchronicity with global tragedies. In 2012, Warner Bros pulled trailers for Gangster Squad in which gunmen opened fire in a cinema shortly after exactly the same thing happened at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado.

After the 9/11 attacks, the release of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage, about a bomb exploding in LA, was postponed by several months and a scene that starred Sofía Vergara as a plane hijacker was cut.

Spider-Man posters that showed the Twin Towers reflected in the superhero’s mask were also pulled around this time, while DreamWorks changed posters for prison drama The Last Castle that showed the American flag flying upside down.