When the strategy first became public this week in a report by Buzzfeed, Regency explained its
use of fake news sites by saying the movie is “about a ‘fake’ cure that makes people sicker.”
On Thursday, however, 20th Century Fox said, “the digital campaign was inappropriate on
every level, especially given the trust we work to build every day with our consumers.”
“In raising awareness for our films, we do our best to push the boundaries of traditional marketing in order to creatively
express our message to consumers,” Dan Berger, a spokesman for the 20th Century Fox movie studio, said in an email to .
In 2011, a marketing company made a viral video in which a man appeared to use a small device connected to his iPhone
to hack into the jumbo screens in Times Square — an entertaining but fake stunt that promoted the movie “Limitless.”
Andrew Essex, chief executive of Tribeca Enterprises
and a former chief executive of the creative agency Droga5, likened the movie studio’s effort to Orson Welles’s radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds,” which was largely told through simulated news bulletins.
Then came 20th Century Fox’s latest movie promotion tactic, for which it created fake news sites with plausible names like The Houston Leader
and The Salt Lake City Guardian and populated them with partisan headlines involving Lady Gaga, President Trump, vaccinations and mental health.