Last week I mentioned Paramount Pictures was catching some flak for billboards for their upcoming 50 Cent biopic Get Rich or Die Tryin’. An advocatcy group felt the placement of the posters, which show Fiddy with a gun and a microphone, around preschools was inappropriate.
Well Paramount has decided to appease the groups and taken down the billboards and, according to a studio exec, they will reassess the placement of the ads. Of course the star and subject of the movie, rapper 50 Cent, says – and this is an important point – that the controversy has helped to raise awareness of and promote the movie. No shit.
On a related note, a group calling themselves The Bubble Project put word balloons on a ton of ads for the movie in public spaces. People are then supposed to write in their own commentary, but the ones they put on 50 Cent posters are largely still blank. AdRants theorizes this is because people are, you know, scared to make fun of the rapper.
