It seems that even if you don’t have any actual footage of your film in your trailer, the MPAA can still demand approval over it. That’s what Kevin Smith found out yesterday, when the MPAA gave him a little call over the recently posted internet teaser trailer for his upcoming comedy Zack And Miri Make A Porno.
As Smith himself explains over at Newsaskew–
The MPAA called and said we had to take it down.
Here’s why: Weinstein Co. (like most studios) is a signatory of the MPAA. As such, there are protocols involving trailers that we failed to follow.
As with features, all trailers get rated get rated by the MPAA. The majority of them are for general audiences (Green Band trailers), but trailers packed with adult content (like our teaser) earns you what’s called a Red Band trailer.
Well, we didn’t go through this process – simply because, we felt, that since the teaser didn’t contain any footage from the actual flick, it wasn’t technically a trailer.Boy, was I wrong.
Turns out all promotional material for any film financed/distributed by a signatory of the MPAA has to be signed-off on by the MPAA – including internet-only materials.
I never realized this, as it’d never been a problem in the past: we’ve been doing ‘net-only teasers since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and nobody ever raised a red flag before (not even on the last flick, for which we also put up two ‘net-only teasers in advance of the rated trailer). But I guess since the teaser was so, shall we say, racy… a rating was in order. We’re now officially submitting the teaser to the MPAA for rating. If they approve it, we’ll put it back up.
Of course, we still have the teaser trailer available here.
