Captivity billboards raise a ruckus in LA, NY

Graphic billboard and taxi cab advertisements for the upcoming movie Captivity are being taken down this week in Los Angeles and New York after public complaints. The ads were divided into four panels showing a woman with the words "abduction," "confinement," "torture," and "termination." She's being kidnapped in the first panel, behind a chain-link fence in the second, hooked up to what looks like jumper cables into her nose in the third panel, and dead with her head dangling over the edge of a table in the fourth.

Lions Gate Films and After Dark Films were flooded with complaints about the ads the past couple of days, and After Dark blamed the ads on a communications error. The company claimed that the wrong file was sent to the printer, and told the Los Angeles Times it would make a contribution to a violence against women organization to make up for anyone it had offended.

The ad had been rejected by the Motion Picture Association of America and therefore puts the movie at risk of being punished with a "no rating" for going ahead with the ad campaign anyway. An unrated film cannot play at most American movie theaters.

Captivity stars 24 daughter Elisha Cuthbert as a woman who wakes up as a madman's prisoner in a cellar.
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