14 DAY TRIAL // Actress Brittany Murphy was found unresponsive in her Hollywood Hills mansion the other week, was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. She was only 32 and controversy still surrounds the cause of her death because she passed away after going into cardiac arrest. A DVD company is now pulling all promotional posters for the thriller “Deadline” for featuring what may be deemed an offensive photo of Murphy, Cinematical informs.
The poster shows Brittany in a bathtub, with wrists apparently slashed. A pool of blood has formed on the floor, while the actress stares with frozen eyes into a place next to the viewer. “Focus Your Fear” is the tagline of the film and it comes in large fonts in the lower part of the poster. Now, the company handling the distribution of the DVD is acting fast to pull all such images from the stores it has all across the US, a task that might prove more difficult than initially expected.
The reason why the decision was made is all but obvious: Brittany Murphy’s death is too recent for it to even be alluded to in a photograph. “Video retailer Redbox is issuing an emergency recall of the poster for Brittany Murphy’s latest film ‘Deadline.’ The image features the actress apparently dead in a bathtub, an eerie reminder of Murphy’s own death, also in a bath, on Sunday, December 20,” Cinematical writes.
“Bumpshack reports that the recall of the image from over 19,000 kiosks nationwide will take 7 to 10 days to complete, and that the film’s distributor is working on an alternate DVD cover image. It’s a display of remarkably good taste on Redbox’s part, especially considering how specific the image is to Murphy’s own death. I don’t think anyone can make a strong case in favor of the original art,” the e-zine further says, applauding the initiative of the DVD company.
Still, skeptics point out on various forums that, while it takes Redbox about 7 to 10 days to remove all posters, word of its initiative is already spreading fast. That is to say, the company is actually generating publicity even as it pretends to do the contrary. Whether that is truly the case, we will probably never find out.