Death of a President, the controversial British drama about the fictional assassination of President George W. Bush, is set for release in the United States on October 27–just ahead of the November 7 elections. The film, however, is expected to flop at the box office after being snubbed by some the nation’s biggest cinema chains.
But Newmarket Films, the 12-year-old Los Angeles-based film financing, production and distribution company, insists it is successfully placed the film in a number of theatres. And Newmarket is no stranger to controversy: The company distributed Mel Gibson‘s The Passion of the Christ when other distributors passed it up.
“Yes, it’s controversial,” Newmarket co-founder Chris Ball told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s quite a compelling political thriller. In many ways it is sympathetic to George Bush. It talks about a rush to judgment. In no way is it a call for violence.”
The film, which received the Prize of the International Critics at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, uses actors and digital manipulation of actual footage to portray a fictional account of President Bush being shot after delivering a speech in Chicago.
(Story continues below…)
“I think the film makes it clear it would really be a horrific event. I really don’t think that anyone would get the idea of assassinating Bush from this film,” director Gabriel Range explains, adding: “It is using the lens of the future to look at the present. It is about issues that have affected us all in the last five years. It is a film about America today.”
One distribution exec questioned the wisdom of rushing Death of a President into theaters ahead of the election.
“In the midst of all the backlash and controversy it seems to make sense to ride the moment,” he told The Reporter. “The film is so topical and incendiary, you’d think that to wait is to waste it. But the film may not have enough time to gestate and get the best theaters booked. They are finding out how difficult and crazy this timing is.”
Regardless of one’s political affiliation or the controversy surrounding it, Death of a President is a film, and as an entertainment Web site, Hollywood.com will feature it as we would any other movie. Hollywood.com provides its users with the tools to make decisions about what movies to see through trailers, interviews and movie reviews. Whether the film’s subject matter is appropriate or not, in the end, is for moviegoers to decide.
