Everyone can probably admit that the number of trailers before a theatrical screening of a film has gotten out of hand. Regularly, there can be 20 minutes or so worth of previews before the feature presentation that by the time you get to the film, you might actually be exhausted by all the other dozen or so films that have been forced into your eyeballs. But the parents and children that attended a recent screening in the UK of “Peppa Pig: Festival of Fun” would have gladly traded in their trailer experience for 10 more previews if they could have avoided the psychological damage done.
According to the BBC, folks with their kids were horrified to see that the Empire Cinema in Ipswich somehow thought it was appropriate to screen trailers for horror films “Brightburn” and “Ma” before the showing of the ‘Peppa Pig’ film. While the trailers are already sanitized versions of the horror films, the footage seen is still way more adult than anything in the animated pig film. And boy, oh boy, did it have an effect on the kids.
A mother who attended the screening with her daughter said, “Normally I would expect her to be singing and dancing when watching something like [‘Peppa Pig’] but she was just really subdued. I tried to cover her eyes during the trailers and told her they were silly films for mummies and daddies, but there were lots of kids crying and she was very confused and started crying too.”
A spokesperson for the theater said, “As soon as the staff on site were made aware of the situation, the programme was stopped and trailers were taken off-screen immediately. We do sincerely apologize for this and for any distress caused and will be reviewing our internal procedures to ascertain how this came to be.”
As an adult, it’s hard not to laugh at the situation. Occasionally, these sorts of mix-ups happen, and from the outside looking in, it’s hilariously awful. But you can’t help but feel bad for the parents that had to do a lot of explaining and calming down before what should have been a simple two-hour escape.
Here are recent trailers for the films that were shown to kids:
