Proving the old adage that the customer is always right, Paramount studios agreed to refund a New Zealand moviegoer's ticket price after the man complained that a scene from the trailer for “Jack Reacher” did not appear in the movie.
The man, identified only as J. Congdon, filed a complaint with New Zealand's Advertising Standards Authority -- which regulates the country's advertising industry -- accusing the thriller's trailer of misleading advertising when a specific scene it promoted was missing from the film. In the filing, Congdon stated that “the explosion where the whole cliff comes down was the defining part of the ad that made me really want to go see the movie ... aside from having Tom Cruise in it.”
Paramount acknowledged that the scene was indeed in the trailer but not in the movie, but said that that moment was one of at least two others that were also cut from the final film. It's common practice for studios to release theatrical and TV trailers months in advance of the movie's release, the studio said, and often before final editing has been completed.
“Thus, despite our best intentions, it is always possible that certain scenes appearing in an advertisement or trailer may not appear in the final version of a film,” Paramount said. “The explosion in question was a single split-second element omitted from a 130-minute long action film.”
Still, Paramount felt it fair to offer Congdon a refund, after which the Advertising Standards Authority closed the case. New Zealand's Commercial Approvals Bureau added that its decision to run the trailer was proper, since the clip posed “no threat of confusion to the large majority of TV viewers.”
[via Telegraph]
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