Warner Bros. to change tagline of 'Orphan' flick

June 3, 2009 / kansascity.com

We're talking about the tagline of the movie trailer, not this poster. And that tagline is:

"It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own."

Yeah. Here's more on the marketing campaign for the horror flick "Orphan":

The movie won't hit theaters until July, but the campaign has already received blistering reviews in the adoption community. The Internet has been humming with outrage over the film's perceived promotion of negative stereotypes about children who need families. More than 900 people joined a Facebook group calling for a boycott, while Warner Bros. executives found themselves blasted with e-mail.

Particularly offensive, say advocates, is the tagline in the trailer: “It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own.”

Hollywood's negative portrayals of adopted kids go back at least to “The Bad Seed” in the 1950s and continued into the 1990s with “Problem Child.” “But it's been a long time since a movie caused this much angst and worry ... even before its release,” said Adam Pertman, director of the Evan B. Donaldson Institute, an adoption research organization.

While acknowledging that little can be done to prevent the release of the film, parents at least hoped to do something about the trailer, which they worried would upset kids who stumbled upon it online or in theaters.

And here's where the story diverged from the script: Warner Bros. agreed.

“We made a mistake,” said Scott Rowe, a company spokesman. “We get complaints about virtually every movie ... but in this case, we went back and said 'You're right ... and we're sorry.'“

The tag line should be edited out by next weekend.

| Chicago Tribune

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The official Warner Brothers trailer can be found here:  http://orphan-movie.warnerbros.com/