Network Says Profile of Director Shyamalan Was Hoax
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Sci Fi cable network and parent company NBC Universal acknowledged on Monday that a special purported to be an unauthorized documentary on director M. Night Shyamalan was really part of a “guerrilla marketing” hoax that went too far.
The three-hour program, which aired on Sunday, was falsely promoted as a “disturbing expose” of the filmmaker that Shyamalan first cooperated with, then tried to have shut down when producers delved too deeply into his personal life.
It turns out Shyamalan was in on the entire production, cooked up to generate publicity for his upcoming film, “The Village,” a supernatural thriller set for release July 30 by Walt Disney Co.-owned Touchstone Pictures, according to Sci Fi Channel and NBC Universal.
The faux documentary, titled “The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan,” was concocted as part of a “guerrilla marketing” campaign emulating a promotional strategy that helped turn the low-budget 1999 thriller “The Blair Witch Project” into a box office hit, Sci Fi spokeswoman Jean Guerin told Reuters.
In this case, the strategy worked a bit too well, leaving a number of entertainment journalists grumbling after they were duped into writing stories reporting the purported conflict between Shyamalan and “documentary” producers as fact.
Guerin said Sci Fi has often presented its promotional campaigns and ads as “a puzzle for people to figure out.”
“The intention is never to hurt the press, to have them go along with you, so I think that’s where it sort of took a wrong turn,” she said.
By aiming to deceive journalists, “this particular campaign went one step too far,” NBC Universal spokeswoman Rebecca Marks said. “It’s not consistent with our publicity and marketing policy. It’s misleading.”
Sci Fi insisted that Touchstone was not involved in the campaign, but studio officials were not immediately available for comment.
Shyamalan, whose previous films include “The Sixth Sense” and “Signs,” issued a statement suggesting the cable channel merely got carried away “by thinking out of the box.”
“I was, of course, involved in the production of the special but had nothing to do with the marketing of it,” he said. “If the Sci Fi Channel erred in their marketing strategy, it was totally out of enthusiasm.”
Marks said development of “Buried Secret” began before the Sci Fi was acquired by NBC as part of the broadcaster’s recent merger with Vivendi Universal Entertainment. NBC Universal is owned by the General Electric Co. .
Asked when NBC Universal became aware of the nature of the special, Marks said, “They’re reviewing the situation to find out and taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The special was directed Nathaniel Kahn, who earned an Oscar nomination for a documentary about his father, the late architect Louis Kahn.
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