Jim Carrey apparently felt he was taking a principled stand when he decided against promoting his own film, Kick-Ass 2, due to its violent content.
Carrey’s change of heart came after recent high-profile violence like that suffered late last year in Newtown, Conn.
Turns out Carrey’s publicity pullout was worth a not so small fortune to the studio behind the movie. The creator of the film’s source material, Mark Millar, says Carrey’s public distancing from the film energized the project’s publicity machine--free of charge.
However, losing support from one of the sequel’s biggest stars seems to have provided a PR boost for the film. “Fortunately, this went out like a clarion call across the interweb, claims of too much violence in a Kick-Ass movie akin to claiming a porno has too much nudity,” Miller wrote in Times. “The bean counters at Universal estimate this bought us $30million in free mainstream publicity. And so it goes on.
Kick-Ass 2, starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Carrey and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, opens in theaters nationwide Aug. 16.