Distanced From Current Events / Film

• The first treatment of Aladdin was set in Baghdad. After the Gulf War broke out Roy Disney demanded this be changed, so co-director John Musker came up with the "jumbled anagram" of Agrabah.
• Arlington Road's release date was pushed back to July 9, 1999 from its original May 14, 1999 release date, due to the Columbine High School shootings, although the studio claimed they wanted to avoid competition from The Phantom Menace, which came out the following weekend of Arlington Road's original release date.
• Following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, FX scrapped a planned airing of Armageddon (1998) because the opening depicted a space shuttle being destroyed.
• NBC's made-for-TV movie Atomic Train was preempted by Denver affiliate KUSA out of sympathy for the Columbine massacre, and the fact that it depicted the destruction of the city.
• In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, No. 2 informs Dr. Evil that his plan to end the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales has been overtaken by real-life events - an exchange cut from the British release, thanks to another far more tragic real-life event involving the Princess of Wales which happened the week before.
• The Bad Seed Returns, the sequel to The Bad Seed (2018) was set to air on Lifetime on Memorial Day weekend however, the movie was postponed in the wake of the May 24, 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas in which 19 students and two teachers were killed ^note Especially given that the movie's plot revolves around a character being bullied. Ironically the movie's star McKenna Grace hails from Texas.
• The film Blue Story, which was about street gangs in London, was pulled from theaters across the UK after a machete fight occurred at a screening of Frozen II.
• Advertisements for the 1991 B horror film Body Parts, in which the protagonist whose arm is severed in an accident receives a limb transplant from a dead serial killer, were pulled in Wisconsin because the promotion and release of the film coincided with the discovery of the Jeffrey Dahmer killings. The city of Milwaukee also elected not to show the film in theaters out of respect for the victims.
• The Boondock Saints was set to be released in theatres the same week as the Columbine shootings, and ended up having an extremely limited release (five theatres in the country, for one week). The film would've been doomed by the coincidence then and there had people not started talking about it to their friends and pen pals and brought about high sales of the DVD, causing it to become a major Cult Classic and leading to a sequel.
• Hours before Brüno (2009)'s red-carpet premiere in Los Angeles, Michael Jackson died, so Universal cut a scene where Bruno interviews LaToya Jackson and steals her phone to get Michael Jackson's phone number, a trim that was confirmed for the general release as well (though it did later turn up on DVD as a deleted scene).
• Zig-Zagged with the 2013 version of Carrie, with its release date being pushed back from March 15 to October 18, just two months before its planned release date. The studio's explanation was that it was to take advantage of the lucrative Halloween market for horror films, but director Kimberly Peirce contends that the real reason was the Sandy Hook shooting making it uncomfortable to release a film with Carrie's subject matter (a bullied high school student who ends up murdering her classmates at the prom in the climax) just three months afterwards.
• The red-carpet premieres of The Dark Knight Rises in France, Mexico, and Japan were cancelled in the wake of the horrific shooting on the film's North American opening day (July 20, 2012) when a Spree Killer stormed a midnight showing in Aurora, Colorado. Twelve people were killed and seventy more were injured, and to make matters worse, the gunman called himself The Joker after he was arrested. Ads touting the movie were been pulled, and Warner Bros. opted to give final box office updates for the film on Monday, rather than through the weekend, out of respect for the victims of the Aurora shooting.
• Attempted by Death Wish (2018), when MGM pushed the movie from November 2017 to February 2018 after the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the film’s new release ended up being two weeks after the Parkland shooting.
• In Demolition Man (released in 1993), a scene has Simon Phoenix looking over a future cryo prison list of inmates and shouting "Jeffrey Dahmer? I love that guy!". Dahmer was bludgeoned to death in prison by another inmate in 1994, leading TV broadcasts of the movie to cut out that line.
• After Cameron Boyce, who plays Carlos in the film, suffered a fatal seizure, the Hollywood premiere of Descendants 3 was cancelled out of respect for him.
• The Enzian Theater, an independent Central Florida-based movie theater, was planning on doing a special screening of Die Hard for Father's Day in 2016, but following the events of the Pulse nightclub shooting, it was pulled and replaced with a screening of Airplane!.
• A showing of Die Hard 2 was delayed in the UK and instead replaced with the showing of the Sylvester Stallone movie Cliffhanger. The reason for this was because there had been a recent incident at Glasgow Airport involving a flaming car crashing into the building, and with the movie being set in an airport they probably thought showing it would be in bad taste.
• Trailers for the film The Dilemma were pulled due to Vince Vaughn's character describing hybrid cars as gay ("but not in a homosexual way") after a rash of gay teen suicides.
• Django Unchained, Jack Reacher and Parental Guidance had their respective red carpet premieres cancelled following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
• Dr. Strangelove:
  • The release of the movie was delayed several weeks due to the Kennedy assassination.
  • One of Slim Pickens' lines was also re-dubbed: "Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas^*originally Dallas with all that stuff."
  • It originally ended with a pie fight in the War Room, and at one point the President is hit, prompting the line "Our gallant President has been struck down in his prime!".
• Some of the promotional posters for Elemental (2023) were parodies of previous Pixar films, and were posted online. However, Ember's poster◊ (which parodied Turning Red) was quickly taken down due to the Canadian wildfires that were happening during the time.
• The horror Escape Room (2019) had its release in Polish cinemas cancelled after five people died in a fire in an escape room in Poland, just a week before the scheduled release date. The film was instead released on DVD a few months later.
• Warner Bros. was advised shortly after the Video Nasty crisis that it would be too soon to attempt a home video re-release of The Exorcist (which was always legal to exhibit in theatres, mind you), which ultimately didn't return to shelves in the UK until 1999. Japan and the US got Laserdisc releases before then.
• Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore had its second trailer pulled from its previously announced release on February 24, 2022 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began the previous evening.
• In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, there was originally a scene in which Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane would visit a Chicago radio station and Ferris would talk about how "come next year, I'll be the first kid to ride on the Space Shuttle". It was even featured in the film's trailer. Unfortunately, however, less than five months before the film was released, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, resulting in the deaths of all seven aboard, including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Because of this, John Hughes had the trailer recalled from theaters and the line was edited out of the final film.
• The release of Fly Away Home, about a thirteen-year-old girl leading a flock of Canada geese to their nesting site by flying a hang-glider, was delayed for several months following the death of seven-year-old Jessica Dubroff in an attempt to become the youngest person to fly across the United States.
• Gangster Squad was hit badly because of the Aurora shooting. Not only was it pushed back from September 2012 to January 2013, but the entire ending had to be rewritten and reshot due to its depiction of gangsters shooting up a movie theater. The trailer, which included scenes from that shootout (and which played in front of The Dark Knight Rises at many theaters), had to be pulled and redone for the same reason. Only time will tell if the offending sequence will ever see the light of day. Talk about bad timing.
• Get Out (2017) was originally supposed to have a Downer Ending where Chris would've escaped Rose's family, only to be killed or arrested by a racist cop while fleeing the scene. This was instead changed to a Bait-and-Switch ending where a cop car pulls up next to Chris, only for it to be revealed that the driver is his friend Rod, who is there to rescue him. Director Jordan Peele says the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown convinced him to go with a more hopeful, escapist ending where the black guy actually gets to survive his ordeal.
• The release of Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone was delayed in the UK because there were parallels to the recent disappearance of Madeline McCann.
• In wake of the death of George Floyd, HBO Max pulled Gone with the Wind so that a content warning could be added concerning the film's content.
• The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 resulted in the temporary removal of a joke in one scene where his name comes up as a punchline, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
• Happy Death Day 2U's release date was bumped up from Feb 14, 2019, to Feb 13, 2019, so it wouldn't fall on the first anniversary of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Screenings were pulled altogether in the area surrounding Parkland, Florida, where the shooting took place.
• Warner Bros. pulled the Clint Eastwood-directed film Hereafter from Japanese theaters after the Sendai earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 (less than a month after its release in that country), as the film's opening sequence contains a harrowing tsunami disaster.
• History of the World Part I: In an interview with Gene Siskel, Mel Brooks revealed that he'd filmed a brief scene that made light of the notorious Three Mile Island incident. "I had a father and a mother made up to look like half a dog and half a cat as a result of a nuclear meltdown," Brooks told Siskel. When test audiences reacted poorly, this bit was removed. However, at least one journalist managed to see an extended cut which contained the footage.
• Hotel Mumbai was pulled from New Zealand movie theaters for 2 weeks following the March 15, 2019 Christchchurch mosque shootings.
• Universal Studios pulled marketing material, then later cancelled the original September 27th, 2019 release of the movie The Hunt (2020) in the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, which killed 22 people and Dayton, Ohio which killed nine people, merely saying that "now is not the right time to release this film". It doesn't help that the film had already garnered controversy over its plot (liberal "elites" versus conservative "deplorables") by both sides of the political spectrum. The release date was eventually moved to March 13, 2020 after spending a few months in The Shelf of Movie Languishment.
• Ten days before Idle Hands came out, the Columbine massacre happened, casting a very dark shadow in the Horror Comedy about a high schooler whose Evil Hand goes on a slaughter. Columbia thought about delaying but still released it, albeit cancelling the premiere and several theaters decided not to screen the movie(mainly those in Colorado since it was the state of the school shooting).
• The film I Love You, Daddy, written, directed by, and starring Louis C.K., was originally set for a limited release on November 17, 2017, having attracted plenty of award-season buzz after being filmed in secret over the summer. However, it was pulled indefinitely by its distributor just a week before it came out after CK confessed to several instances of sexual harassment, which was very similar to the movie's plot of a Hollywood producer trying to stop his teenage daughter from dating a 70-year-old film director (who was heavily based on Woody Allen).
• In the Heights changed a lyric from the original production — "Donald Trump and I own the links and he's my caddy!" — to instead reference Tiger Woods. This was a carry-over from other then-recent stage productions of In the Heights that were produced during Trump's extremely controversial presidency.
• Inside Out aired on Starz Kids at 2:00AM EST on March 22, 2016. The film reached the point where Joy and Bing Bong fall into the memory dump just as the Brussels attacks began. Starz responded to this by pulling most of the planned airings of the film (which were supposed to be aired every single day for the next 14 days) across their networks and either replaced them with other films such as Look Who's Talking, Cinderella and Pixels, or showed the film during prime time or early in the morning.
• A showing of It (1990) was pulled from UK television following the recent murder of ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
• Similarly a showing of The Towering Inferno was pulled because a few days earlier 72 people had died in the Grenfell Tower disaster.
• In-Universe example for Jurassic World, when Lowery shows Claire the T-shirt bearing the original Jurassic Park's logo (one of the unused original shirts from the first park, which he paid a lot for on eBay), Claire responds with distaste at how the original logo serves as a reminder of all the people who died in the events of the first film.
• The James Bulger murder, which killed any chance of Mikey ever being released in Britain for the foreseeable future, also delayed a re-release of at least one Video Nasty, Zombie Creeping Flesh, for the next several years; the BBFC told the distributors that now would not be the best time to submit the film for rating. It wasn't until 2002 that the BBFC decided to accept a submission of the film, and the distributors' patience was duly rewarded: the film was rated 18 uncut. Interestingly, the video release of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs was held up until 1995 for the same reason.
• When A Night at the Opera was re-released during World War II, several lines mentioning Italy were deleted from almost all surviving prints, leaving them unheard for several decades until a print with the offending material intact was discovered in Hungary in 2008.
• Wes Craven's original vision for A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) was to make his villain Freddy Krueger a child molester and rapist as well as a child killer, but had to excise this little detail because he wanted to avoid being accused of exploiting a series of highly-publicized child molestations that was happening in California at the time the movie was being made. The 2010 remake, though, restores said detail.
• "O" was delayed after the Columbine shootings, since the film featured gun violence among high school students. It was postponed from its October 1999 release date and wasn't released until August 2001, with Miramax selling the distribution rights to Lionsgate.
• Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre had already been pushed forward due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but then the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused nearly a year in the shelf, given the filmmakers thought it would be in bad taste to issue a movie with Ukrainian henchmen. Eventually the film came out overseas in January 2023 with the U.S. release date moved to March 3rd of that year.
• Phone Booth, the Colin Farell movie with his character stuck in a phone booth at the mercy of a sniper (voiced by Kiefer Sutherland), was originally supposed to be released in October 2002. In light of the D.C. Sniper attacks, it was moved to April 2003.
• NTV didn't show Ponyo for two years because of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
• In 1966, CBS pulled an airing of Psycho at the last minute in response to the murder of U.S. Senator Charles H. Percy's daughter just days before it was to air, replacing it with Kings Go Forth.
• ITV pulled an airing of The Railway Children (their adaptation) three days after the Ufton Nervet rail crash in 2004.
• Following Haruki Kadokawa's arrest for drug smuggling, his Live-Action Adaptation of Rex: A Dinosaur Story, another CLAMP manga (see Anime/Manga for another example of CLAMP falling victim to this trope), was pulled from theatres. No further attempts have been made at live-action films of CLAMP's manga since.
• As a result of the Columbine shooting, Scream 3 was delayed several months and almost completely rewritten. The original script was about a group of obsessive fans of the Stab films, the Scream series' in-universe version of itself, who put on Ghostface masks and started killing for real in imitation of their screen idols. Given that Columbine caused a moral panic over violence in the media, with many Moral Guardians saying that the killers' love of violent movies and video games had warped their minds, a story like this was never going to fly, and the third Scream film was turned into a Horrible Hollywood story about production on Stab 3 being derailed by a new killer targeting the cast and crew. (Kevin Williamson would later recycle his original idea for Scream 3 into the TV series The Following, with the deranged movie fans turned into deranged fans of an actual serial killer.)
• Small Soldiers:
  • The original cut included a scene of the Commando Elite pointing their guns at Phil Fimple (who was played by Phil Hartman), as well as him saying "I think I'm having an aneurysm." These scenes had to be edited down after Hartman was shot and killed just over a month before the movie came out.
  • The Kip Killigan toy was not distributed in Oregon, as a teen called Kip Kinkel went on a shooting spree there shortly before the film was released.
• The release of SpaceCamp, originally scheduled for early 1986, was pushed back several months following the Challenger disaster.
• Steamboat Bill, Jr. was originally meant to incorporate a large flood as the disaster that hits the town. However, due to a real Mississippi flood and bickering amongst the producers, the flood plot was changed to a "cyclone."
• Sully had its Brazilian release postponed by two weeks given a few days before its scheduled debut an airplane taking a local team to Colombia crashed, killing 71 people, even if Sully is about a plane saved from such a disaster by its pilot.
• Targets had its release delayed due to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, which ultimately ended up hurting it at the box office. However, it's since been Vindicated by History.
• Teaching Mrs. Tingle, about high schoolers getting revenge on their teacher, was retitled from "Killing Mrs. Tingle" because of Columbine.
• The 3D version of Top Gun was not released until February 2013 due to director Tony Scott's passing; though he lived to see its completion, Paramount apparently didn't want the release to be seen as exploitative, and given that post-converted 3D already has enough of a bad reputation as it is...
• After John Lasseter's resignation from Disney/Pixar following allegations of sexual misconduct, a Casting Couch Hilarious Outtake involving Stinky Pete and the Barbies ("I’m sure I could get you a part in Toy Story 3...") was removed for the 2019 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital releases of Toy Story 2.
• The Walter Hill film Trespass was originally titled Looters and was scheduled for release in summer 1992. After the L.A. riots, the film was pushed back to December and had its title changed to avoid negative connotations.
• The Ben Stiller movie Neighborhood Watch, about suburban dads who form a neighborhood watch and end up fighting aliens, had its marketing pulled from movie theaters in the wake of the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch man in Sanford, Florida. The film was subsequently renamed The Watch, with the marketing revamped to focus more on the alien aspect than the neighborhood watch.
• The Norwegian theatrical release of We Need to Talk About Kevin (a movie about a mother dealing with the fact that her son had massacred the kids at his school) was postponed from autumn 2011 to 2012 due to the recent Utoya massacre. This massacre is also the probable reason why it saw little distribution and got snubbed at the Oscars.
• Wild Men, a Danish film that takes place in Norway and prominently features bowhunting, had its premiere postponed after a Danish citizen used a bow and arrows (including other weapons) during an attack in Norway that killed five people.
• Amazon Studios cancelled the red carpet premiere of Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel after their CEO Roy Price got caught up in the Great Hollywood Sex Scandal of 2017; Allen was already just another celebrity to have been caught up in a sex scandal by that point.
• Wonder Woman had its London premiere cancelled after the 2017 terrorist bombing in Manchester. The same thing ended up happening with The Mummy's UK premiere as well.
• This is the reason why then-regular Lucio Fulci collaborator Dardano Sacchetti is uncredited for his work on Zombi 2. Specifically, his father had died before the film premiered, and he didn't wish at the time to be associated with a film where the dead come back to life only to be killed a second time.
• The 2021 Golden Raspberry Awards had a one-off "Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie" category, making fun of the actor's prolific B-movie work. A week later, Willis' family publicly revealed that he had been diagnosed with aphasia (later confirmed to be dementia) and would retire from acting, which came after several years of rumors surrounding his physical health and ability to consent to accepting his film roles. After initial backlash to the Razzie's taking the announcement lightly, they revoked the award and apologised. Guess that's why you do not bash actors at worst movie awards.

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