“None of us were interested in taking sides with this movie,” Jason Blum tells The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview announcing the return of his horror-thriller The Hunt. Previously scheduled to release last September, Universal pulled the film. The plot reportedly finds a group of “elites” hunting “deplorables” in Most Dangerous Game-style, after Fox News, and later President Trump, lambasted the premise.
In a few days after the release of a trailer, The Hunt became the most controversial release of the year — but one that no one had actually seen.
Now, the film is set to make its way back to theaters. The Hunt, written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, and directed by Craig Zobel, will hit theaters on March 13.
In the THR interview, Lindelof explains why he and Blum wanted to pull the movie from its original release.
“For us there was just a fundamental frustration that nobody was talking about the movie. They were all talking about what their perception of the movie was—a perception that was largely formed based on all the events in the aftermath of the horrific weekend before. [But] we really don’t want to be pointing fingers, and more importantly, we don’t want to be wagging fingers at anyone for overreacting or reacting incorrectly. We just felt like the movie was being misunderstood.”
A new trailer clears up some of the confusion that ensued after early plot leaks. There are plenty of murderous, R-rated teases, but Hilary Swank’s character is blunt to anyone who wants to spin the movie a second time: “We were joking. You really believed we were hunting human beings for sport?”
