Is Hollywood killing people?

Most of my blog posting are rather humerus in nature but this one is something serious.

I am one of those Harry Potter fans who was looking forward to the Half Blood Prince release for evil reasons. I won't spoil anything but I have not been happy with the editing or directing in the most recent installments. I am amongst the many fans who have begun to lose interest in the movies as they stray further and further from the characters we've come to love in the books and have leaned increasingly on sensationalism and computer graphics to awe their audiences. Warner Brothers is aware of this lack of enthusiasm and they have worked hard to try and overcome it. They have even pushed back the release of the film. I think one reason they've done this is so that those who have been given the pleasure of viewing the film can write their (hopefully glowing) reviews and get people interested in the film before it's release.

Something else happened prior to the film's scheduled release however. Rob Knox who played a supporting role was stabbed and killed in a bar fight. Now these kinds of terrible things happen every day. It's not that uncommon an occurrence. I might even look past it as coincidence if it were not for other prominent deaths preceding movie releases.

The movie the Dark Knight was rumored to be a very good movie. It was, however, to be very dark and much askew from the previous installments of the Batman movies. As such there was some trepidation that it may not be received quite as well by the standing fan base as the others were. You can only put so much of a movie into a trailer so the producers needed to come up with another way to make people interested in this movie. People who were loyal fans as well as those who may never have seen a Batman movie before.

What happened prior to the release of the Dark Knight to garner this interest? There was the sudden and unexpected death of the costarring actor Heath Ledger. What better way to get people to watch a movie than out of respect for the dead right?

Then we move on to the last recent and prominent example. The movie Frost/Nixon was set to be released on a limited basis in select cities. Being a political movie it was standing on a rather narrow line to begin with. People could love it or they could hate it. Now I've seen some of the earnings for the movie from it's first week but it's hard to tell what they mean. As the movie was released only in select cities you can't compare it to the massive earnings of nation wide releases. However, it seems to me that in the time it's been out there the 1.8 million it's earned is somewhat meager.

What is a movie production company to do? Well, you don't want to kill off too many Hollywood actors or you have to go and train new ones and who wants to go through that hassle. So what's the next best thing? Kill off someone famous associated with the story the movie tells. Who could they kill off without being too conspicuous? Well, the options are limited when you're dealing with a movie about the Watergate scandal. There are not too many people still around who the public associates with it. But the powers that be managed to find someone. On Decenber 18th, Mark Felt (A.K.A. Deep Throat) who helped break the scandal died in his home. Yes, he was 95 and in poor health but in light of the other deaths I think his could be considered one in a long line of famous deaths associated with and in close proximity to the release of major motion pictures.

Maybe I'm crazy but Rob Knox, Mark Felt, Heath Ledger, Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee, Bella Lugosi, Richard Harris and a startling long list of others might disagree.