The movie is billed as ‘satire.’ Don’t fall for it. This what they want. Courtesy of Blumhouse Pictures.
ESPN has pulled a trailer for Universal Pictures and Blumhouse’s The Hunt – a movie reportedly featuring liberal elites hunting red state “deplorables” for sport – over the weekend, a decision influenced by the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, that left over 30 dead and several dozen wounded.
An ESPN source confirmed that the film’s trailers will no longer air on the network, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Over the Aug. 3 weekend, ESPN pulled an ad for the film that it had previously cleared, while AMC ran the spot during the season premiere of its drama The Preacher. It’s unclear whether the ads were identical, but the one yanked by ESPN opened with a sound resembling an emergency broadcast signal. A rep for ESPN parent Disney declined to comment on the move, but an ESPN source says no spots for the film will appear on the network in the coming weeks.
The film, which has been described as a gory satire featuring actresses Hilary Swank and Betty Gilpin, follows a group of elites who stalk and murder conservatives in red states. The hunters are fueled by their hatred of the “MAGA-type” characters and their right-leaning positions. While the term “deplorables” may not be explicitly stated in the trailer, Daily Mail notes that the “hunted” were, in fact, described as “deplorables” in the screenplay.
“The film was originally called Red State Vs. Blue State,” the Daily Mail reports.
It is not clear whether the filmmakers are sympathetic to the “Deplorables” or the “hunters.” Nevertheless, Blumhouse founder Jason Blum is a notorious Trump-hater who was booed off stage at the 32nd Israeli Film Festival in Los Angeles last year after blaming the president for the rise of anti-Semitism.
“A lot is on the line, the last two years have been hard for all of us who cherish the freedom as citizens of this country,” the BlacKkKlansman producer said, triggering boos. “As you can see from this auditorium, it’s the end of civil discourse. We have a president who calls the press the enemy of the people. Thanks to our president, antisemitism is on the rise.”
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