Uh oh, is the ugly hand of Tom Cruise or his notoriously prickly and defensive handlers raising its head?
The Bryan Singer-directed MGM film, “Valkyrie” is screening in New York this week to press and some critics are already being preemptively banned.
Fox 411’s Roger Friedman said yesterday that he was “banned” from seeing the film. Patrick Goldstein then called United Artists/MGM marketing chief, Michael Vollman who claimed, Freidman “just wasn’t invited…screenings are a privilege, not a right, and indicated a desire to be open-minded and not telegraphed his intentions ahead of time, we would’ve acted differently.”
Goldstein notes that he doesn’t “like the idea of studios banning writers from screenings, since judging from the state of my frosty relations with a couple of studios right now, it’s quite possible that, ahem, I could be next.”
Jeffrey Wells doubts that would happen to him because of his political position in the movies world and says, “I know, having experienced a few temporary freeze-outs by some major distributors in my time.”
All we know is that critics getting banned for not liking a film they are hired to critique is nonsensical fascism, but the power of Cruise is unrelenting and people around him act accordingly (either out of fear or because they’re explicitly instructed). We could say more, but we unfortunately do live in some fear cause we’re small potatoes. It should be noted that two Variety writers have already “reviewed” the film, Anne Thompson liked it, calling it a “well-made, entertaining thriller” and Tom McCarthy was kinda meh on the whole thing. The Hollywood Reporter was pretty positive about the film as well.