'Gangster Squad' Scene May Delay Opening: Movie Theater Massacre Resembles Colorado Shooting
In the wake of the tragic Aurora, Colo., theater shooting, executives at Warner Bros. are considering removing or reshooting scenes in an upcoming film due to a specific scene that resembles the massacre.
Warner Bros. is contemplating making the changes to its upcoming thriller "Gangster Squad," which contains a key scene for the movie showing mobsters firing on an unsuspecting theater audience as the gangsters stand behind a movie screen. The scene shows the terrified audience scrambling to escape as machine guns fire rips through the crowd.
Trailers for "Gangster Squad" have regularly featured the scene. The movie takes place in the 1940s and is centered on legendary gangster Mickey Cohen's attempted takeover of Los Angeles. The movie features Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Emma stone and is directed by Ruben Fleischer, who also directed "Zombieland."
After the news of Friday's shooting, Warner Bros. pulled the trailer from theaters. It had been playing in front of movies including "The Dark Knight Rises." In addition, the trailer was also pulled from YouTube.
The film is scheduled to be released on Sept. 7, but that date may change given the decision of the movie company.
This is not the first time that a movie has had to alter it premiere date due to national tragedy. During the time immediately following the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 20th Century Fox changed the name of a film initially titled "Neighborhood Watch" to "The Watch," according to NBC.
On July 20, James Holmes walked into a movie theater during the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises" and opened fire on the unsuspecting crowd, killing 12 and injuring 59 people.
"We were maybe 20 or 30 minutes into the movie and all you hear, first you smell smoke, everybody thought it was fireworks or something like that, and then you just see people dropping and the gunshots are constant," witness Christ Jones told KMGH.
