Director Craig Zobel says he was surprised by the controversial first trailer for his satirical horror movie, The Hunt. Originally scheduled to open in September 2019, the film follows a group of strangers who find themselves being hunted by wealthy "elites" for sport (or, at least, so they believe). Universal canceled The Hunt's release following the mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso last August, and shortly after President Donald Trump criticized the movie on his Twitter account. The studio has since re-scheduled it to arrive this month and released a new trailer that, unlike the original promo, plays up the film's satire and social commentary over its thriller elements.
In a recent interview with Playboy, Zobel admitted "I was a little surprised by the first trailer. The advertising certainly didn’t help us, because it didn’t quite tell the story." He went on to say "People were able to misinterpret things because they didn’t have any information other than what was in the trailer, which was not all of the information, for sure." The director later added there were Twitter accounts open for three days that posted "nothing but anti-Craig Zobel tweets" after the controversy, before insisting he didn't change anything about The Hunt after the fact and "no one has asked me to."
The Hunt's original trailer was certainly a far cry from the one currently playing in theaters. It mostly focused on the film's survival horror aspects and bypassed any mention of its satirical use of politically-loaded terms like "deplorables" and "elites". Blumhouse, which is producing The Hunt, has had a good deal of success in the past with movies that blend commentary and horror (like Get Out and The Purge series) - something that makes the decision to under-play the film's satire in the first trailer all the more curious. Ironically, Universal might've done that to try and avoid creating an unnecessary controversy around the movie, only to do the complete opposite. Either way, people can judge The Hunt for themselves next week.
Here is the official synopsis for The Hunt:
In the shadow of a dark internet conspiracy theory, a group of elites gathers for the very first time at a remote Manor House to hunt ordinary Americans for sport. But the elites’ master plan is about to be derailed because one of The Hunted, Crystal (Betty Gilpin, GLOW), knows The Hunters’ game better than they do. She turns the tables on the killers, picking them off, one by one, as she makes her way toward the mysterious woman (two-time Oscar® winner Hilary Swank) at the center of it all.
Source: Playboy
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