Killer Biopic Stirs Controversy in Canada

According to the Montreal Gazette, 'Karla', a film about notorious Canadian killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo was pulled from the screening schedule of the Montreal Film Festival due to a political and sponsor backlash:

In recent months, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty had been urging people not to go see the movie, which documents the story of Canada's most notorious couple and the brutal killings of schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy.

McGuinty congratulated the Montreal film festival organizers Thursday for cancelling the screening, which had been scheduled for later this month.

"These crimes were searing events in the life of this province," McGuinty said. "I have not understood how people would want to profit from that."

Sellers said he knew Air Canada, a sponsor of the Montreal festival, did not want its logo to be posted during the screening of Karla, and he believes the airline was among those sponsors pressuring the festival to drop the movie.

So has all of the negative publicity hurt the producer's chances for finding an audience? According to Quantum Entertainment producer Michael Sellers, Apparently not:

Sellers also said all the publicity generated by politicians like McGuinty speaking against the movie, and the cancellation by the Montreal festival, have actually helped his cause.

"I've had two other film festivals and two or three other distributors call already this morning, so the news value of this and the controversy may in the end be positive," he said.

Will politicians ever learn? If you don't want people to go see a movie, leave it alone. Instead, there are now over 300 articles on Google News, providing hundreds of free column inches -- the dream of every indie movie marketer. Right now, it looks like the producers are working the "freedom of artistic expression" and "no one's dragging you to see this" PR angles, which are straight out of the ol' Miramax playbook. Changing the films name from the generic "Deadly" to "Karla" was a pretty brash move, however, and looks like a blatant move to capitalize on the publicity surrounding Karla Homolka's recent release from prison. We don't care about all that though -- we're still shell-shocked from reading that the flick stars Laura Prepon from "The 70's Show" -- count us in!

[Via the Montreal Gazette]

['Karla' Official Site]