Blumhouse's The Hunt

It looked to be The Purge, but much smaller and with an air of "we don't have a clue who these people are or why rich fat cats are hunting these guys."

So was anyone looking forward to this?

Because thanks to recent situations that probably shouldn't be brought up here, you may be out of luck.

Essentially, you guys remember how Sony canned the release of The Interview because they were worried North Korea would raise hell? Universal's doing that but because releasing it on September would be WAY too soon.

I didn't even heard of this until now.

Also, I am not in a position to comment about the film's cancellation because I still don't know what situation really happened. And I want answers short and at the subject.

"Scooby Dooby Doo!"

This paragraph from a Slate article reporting on the cancellation is chilling.

Although it’s possible that executives at Universal were motivated by a genuine crisis of conscience over the content of The Hunt rather than fear of a conservative backlash, neither the film nor the political environment has changed that much in the past few weeks, so it seems likely that avoiding the president’s rage is a significant part of this. Although it may set a bad precedent for Universal Pictures to give Fox News veto power over the studio’s business, it’s clear that putting The Hunt in theaters at this moment would mean volunteering to serve as a punching bag in an ongoing campaign of distraction waged by vicious interests. And it’s equally clear that it doesn’t matter in the slightest what point, if any, The Hunt makes about the relationship between rich people on the coasts and poor people in the heartland: It’s obvious from the trailer that the films’ elites aren’t heroes, but Fox News will interpret the film in whatever way is most politically advantageous at the moment. Given those circumstances, it makes sense that the studio decided that the best way to win this game was not to play.

That being said, the movie looks childish and dull. There are plenty of movies out there that deal with this kind of thing (i.e. The Running Man) that don't rely on tropes that'll be dated 30 years from now.

Edited by Mario1995 on Aug 10th 2019 at 7:06:29 AM

"The devil's got all the good gear. What's God got? The Inspiral Carpets and nuns. Fuck that." - Liam Gallagher

Wait, what was the plot of this game even? From what I heard this was a satire about rich people doing Hunting the Most Dangerous Game. But why were they worried about offending Trump or conservatives?

Edited by theLibrarian on Aug 10th 2019 at 6:44:39 AM

Because after the two shootings, Trump and the GOP have decided attacking violent video games is the best tactic — and then decided he would attack "The Hunt," a movie no one has seen yet, for being about the rich hunting the poor. Despite the fact that many, many movies have been about this, including goddamn Hostel.

Although I don't believe the full plot is public, the traditional turn-around is for The Hunter Becomes the Hunted. So the "deplorables" would be end up defeating the evil liberals.

I'd seen the trailer and that looks exactly like what the premise was. The heroine is seen confronting the villainess in her home and fighting her. So it's obvious this was going to be some sort of revenge fantasy where the heartland Americans turn the tables on those nasty liberal elites, which is why the controversy from Fox News of all places has been hilarious.

Wait, it’s the rich hunting the poor? Why LIBERAL elites then?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure these aren't "liberal" elites, but rather Trump-like elites, hence the disparaging remarks from Trump and the GOP and Fox.

It's a strange dichotomy these days:

• Conservatives hate the "liberal elites," but...
• ...most rich people these days are conservative so...
• ...the "liberal elite" is really just code-word for "rich Jews."

It's a way to be anti-Semitic without sounding anti-Semitic.

It's unclear. The problem with the Hunt is that the trailer said the people being hunted were "deplorables" being hunted by the elites, and that term is famously applied to Trump's base. It may simply have been a marketing stunt and reflected nothing, it might have been genuine or it might have meant the exact opposite in the film proper. We'll never know.

The usage of "deplorables" is how the film caught wind of Trump in the first place.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Honestly, much like The Interview I would guess there were already some concerns about the content of the movie and/or marketability and this is more of a tipping point. Unlike The Interview, which was pulled based on a direct threat because of the existence of the movie, this was just bad press based on recent events. You generally don't go from "locked and good to go" to "bury it behind a highway mile marker" unless we are talking about a massive internal scandal.

Apparently Trump didn't even name the movie he was tweeting about, and this was the only thing others could identify. So that feels even more unrelated.

Edited by KJMackley on Aug 11th 2019 at 2:25:58 AM

I imagine when the movie says “deplorables” they mean it as a synonym for “undesirables”.

Sorry that I posted it only now, but it looks like the test screening was negatively received and death threats started to be channeled to Universal and Blumhouse, resulting in its cancellation.

Edited by Andrei_Bondoc on Aug 20th 2019 at 11:52:08 AM

"Scooby Dooby Doo!"

Of course right-wing death threats are part of it.

Probably for the best, because this seems very much like a Purge clone. Which is weird, because isn't The Purge a Blumhouse franchise?

It's been 3000 years…

It is a Blumhouse franchise.

I don't know what to say about its cancellation and the factors behind that decision.

"Scooby Dooby Doo!"

Considering what the film was reportedly like, the only thing I can say is that while the right wing has a tremendous persecution complex, the thing they hate the most is admitting to it.

Yeah, they call the left "Snowflakes" so many times yet the left gets outraged at things like children being kept in cages while the right gets upset at a shoe manufacturer's choice of advertising or a razor commercial.

It's funny: Ready or Not just came out this weekend and apparently, it's far more "Eat the Rich"/Most Dangerous Game horror fantasy movie than The Hunt was. And so far, I've seen no articles about it at all.

Probably because it's more like a wedding from Hell than anything else.

It's been 3000 years…

It's post-wedding. And it's apparently far more liberal than the trailers show.

FYI - The movie has conservative heartland Americans who have done something racist or tweeted something politically incorrect in the past year as the victims. The liberals are the villains 100% and make numerous jokes about how they're hunting monsters while the victims include the gorgeous (white, blonde, Barbie if she wasn't incorrectly modeled-looking Betty Gilpin).

The reason the movie was shut down is the fact the very people it was meant as a love letter to shut it down.

They seriously misread their audience and chose...poorly to alienate other people who would have gone to see it ala the Purge.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

I still don't think anyone would shut down a movie release just because of a week-long twitter outrage. It was implied before that the movie was just not testing well (specifically the politics of the movie), and was low budget with so little hype it just didn't take much to tip it over.

What. Did I. Just. Tell. You?

"Scooby Dooby Doo!"

On March 13th, The Hunt is back on...

No, seriously.

Here's a new trailer:

Meanwhile, this poster◊ is something else...

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Feb 11th 2020 at 1:36:01 PM