Want to scar a kid for life? Just show them the trailer forSausage Party. Better yet, don’t, as it might be considered child abuse in some circles. One theater in California is learning this the hard way. Pixar is currently proving that they can do very little wrong.Finding Doryis currently crushing it at the box office, having defeatedIndependence Day: Resurgencelast weekend and it has already grossed more than $300 million. There are a lot of older folks heading out to see theFinding Nemosequel, but the audience is still largely made up of kids, and that became problematic for one California theater.
Recently, prior to a showing ofFinding Doryat the Brenden Concord 14 Movie Theatre in Concord, CA, the trailer forSeth Rogen’s upcomingR-rated animatedcomedySausage Partywas shown. The screening was packed with families who, as one might understand, were not too happy about it. Speaking with theEast Bay Times, Brenden’s VP of operationsWalter Eichingerexplained what led to the incident.
“Playing that trailer was a one-time honest mistake by a theater manager moving screens around in effort to accommodate several large last-minute groups wanting to see ‘Dory.’ The wrong movie was started by mistake.”
Honest mistake or not, that doesn’t change the fact thatSausage Partymight have been the worst possible trailer to show to an audience full of kids. The green band trailer lookskid friendlyenough, which might have had the kids being really into it. That is until the baby carrots get chomped to death and theSaving Private Ryanfood death scene traumatized them.Eichinger, not surprisingly, made an apology, but he did seem to be dodging as much blame as possible.
“It was caught soon, but not until the trailer played. We regret it, apologize for it, and we are not happy that it happened. We fully realize this trailer is not appropriate for ‘Dory’ and we would never schedule something like that. The trailer for ‘Sausage Party’ is not and never has been scheduled with ‘Dory.”
The exact date that the incident occurred wasn’t revealed, and outside of the apology, it isn’t known if the theater did anything to compensate those who were at the showing. Granted, they can’t scrubSausage Partyfrom the kids memories, but a free popcorn might have been a nice gesture.Seth Rogen, who wrote and produced the movie, took to Twitter after the story broke saying “This made my day.” Seemingly delighted by the fact that this happened in the first place.
Sausage Partyis in the same3D animationstyle that was popularized by Pixar and is typically associated with family friendly movies, but is the first R-rated, feature length movie of its kind being released. The incident is probably only helping to promoteSausage Party, and doesn’t seem to ultimately be harmingFinding Doryor the Brenden Concord theater. If you are of appropriate age, you can check out theSausage Partytrailer here, or, you can go see Pixar’sFinding Doryin theaters now.
