When you go to see a family movie at the theater, you’re putting your trust in the employees running the joint that the trailers they’ll be playing before the film will be as age-appropriate as the movie itself. But every so often – and it happened last year when a trailer for Hereditary played before Peter Rabbit… oops! – well, let’s just say they’re not so great at their jobs.
As reported by BBC, children at a showing of Peppa Pig: Festival of Fun at Empire Cinema in Ipswich, England were horrified when the trailers for the James Gunn-produced horror/superhero movie BrightBurn and Blumhouse’s Ma played before the animated family movie about a friendly pig. According to the adults in attendance, many children left in tears.
“Normally I would expect her to be singing and dancing when watching something like [Peppa Pig] but she was just really subdued,” Charlie Jones told the site, relaying the experience she and her 2-year-old daughter (and 10-month-old son) had at the fateful screening. “I tried to cover her eyes during the trailers and told her they were silly films for mummies and daddies, but there were lots of kids crying and she was very confused and started crying too.”
Doing damage control, a spokeswoman for Empire made the following statement: “As soon as the staff on site were made aware of the situation, the programme was stopped and trailers were taken off-screen immediately. We do sincerely apologise for this and for any distress caused and will be reviewing our internal procedures to ascertain how this came to be.”
BrightBurn has been rated “R” for “horror violence/bloody images, and language,“ while Ma has been rated “R” for “violent/disturbing material, language throughout, sexual content, and for teen drug and alcohol use.” The BrightBurn trailer highlights a woman pulling a piece of glass out of her eye, as well as some intense action and an evil kid in a creepy mask. The trailer for Ma is similarly a bit much for 2-year-olds, with one dude getting splattered across the road by a truck that’s presumably driven by Octavia Spencer’s villainous title character.
Oops.
