A Missouri movie theater is in trouble with police and local residents after pulling a prank that could have ended with tragic results.
During last week’s opening of “Iron Man 3″, the Goodrich Capital 8 thought it would be a great idea to hire an actor to walk into the theater during the movie, while dressed in full tactical gear and carrying a (fake) gun. Naturally, moviegoers were scared out of their minds, believing it was a real shooter and a repeat of the deadly movie theater shooting in Aurora, CO, so they started dialing 911.
“Everything was in place, it’s the opening night of a superhero movie, it’s somebody walking in all-dark clothes, everything pointed to bad things about to happen,” Jefferson City Police Capt. Doug Shoemaker said. “There’s really no good that can come of this.”
But the manager of the theater tried to downplay the prank, saying it had been planned months in advance and only a few customers complained. Still, did this jackass ever consider the possibility that everyone may have not found this funny and bad things could have come from it? A gun carrying movie goer could have opened fire in defense, or an off-duty police officer viewing the movie could have possibly killed the actor in the interest of public safety.
Realizing the prank was maybe not such a good idea after all, the theater posted the following statement Friday evening on their Facebook page:
“We apologize and are sympathetic to those who felt they were in harm’s way with our character promotion for Iron Man 3. This was not a publicity stunt. We have worked with the Cosplacon group on many movies to dress up and help entertain our customers. We have had many complaints about the members dressed specifically as S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives carrying fake guns. We didn’t clearly tell our customers and some people didn’t realize it was for entertainment purposes only. We apologize that police were called to come out to our theater. We have a wonderful working relationship with the Jefferson City Police Department. Going forward we will take the necessary steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Security and safety for our customers is our number one priority.”
