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Movies & TV

12th Feb 2020

Six months after being pulled, controversial horror The Hunt is finally getting a release

Rory Cashin

the hunt

The new release date is celebrated with a brand new trailer.

Following a series of mass shootings in America, Universal made the decision to pull their horror movie The Hunt entirely from their release schedule.

The movie was even denounced from President Trump himself, who took to Twitter to fire off a tirade towards the movie:

However, both Universal, the movie’s executive producer Jason Blum (Get Out, Whiplash), and the movie’s writer Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, The Leftovers) announced this week that the movie will be getting a full cinematic release after all.

Lindelof said of Trump’s reaction: “My overwhelming feeling then was what it is now, which is that I wish that he had seen it. The movie that he was talking about was not the movie that I feel that we made. It was the movie that it was being reported on. So, if he had said, ‘This is a piece of shit, I’m sorry I wasted my time,’ that would have felt better because at least he was talking about the movie.”

The movie – which feels like it falls somewhere in between The Purge and The Hunger Games – deals with 12 strangers who wake up in a clearing, with no idea how they got there. It seems peaceful enough, until they spot some well-to-do folk heading there way, all armed with guns. The Hunt has begun, and they are the prey.

Blum added that he always knew the movie would be released eventually: “I think we needed time. There’s never been a movie where there was so much judgment about a movie nobody has seen…. I was definitely very surprised by that. And it took a long time to process. But we always felt, together, collectively with the studio, that the movie would come out.”

The Hunt is set to arrive in American cinemas on Friday 13 March, with no set release date for Irish cinemas just yet.

Check out the new trailer here:

Clip via Universal Pictures

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