"Kick-Ass" Trailer Controversy

The New York Times features this article by Brooks Barnes on a controversy over the red band trailers for the film Kick-Ass. The restricted trailers include hardcore violence, harsh language (some of it coming from a pre-teen), and sexual jokes. This trailer is only available online but the nature of the web makes it accessible to everyone.

An excerpt:

The Motion Picture Association of America, the trade organization that bestows ratings and regulates movie advertising, restricts release of these ads to sites that require viewers to pass an age-verification test, in which viewers 17 and older have to match their names, birthdays and ZIP codes against public records on file.

The problem is that the raunchy trailers pop up on sites without age restrictions almost instantaneously. Fans copy them to their own blogs and Facebook profiles and post them outside of YouTube’s so-called age gates. All movie trailers go viral, but the red-band ones speed across the Internet with an added velocity because of their “can you believe what they just said” nature.

Having viewed the red-band trailers (you can see one of them here), the trailer makes complete sense from a marketing stand-point. The green-band trailer makes Kick-Ass look like a family friendly action adventure, sort of a cross between 3 Ninjas and Fanboys, and Lionsgate, the studio releasing Kick-Ass, would likely find itself in even deeper trouble if the film went to theaters with that impression in moviegoers minds, especially parents.