Cure For Wellness 'fake news' marketing stunt slammed as 'monumentally stupid'

A publicity stunt for new Twentieth Century Fox movie ‘A Cure For Wellness’, in which fake news was distributed online, has been slated by marketing experts.

It emerged that a network of fake sites, with titles like The Sacramento Dispatch and The Salt Lake City Guardian, which were presented as legitimate news outlets, were carrying stories of an inflammatory nature.

One claimed that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had secretly met at a spa in Switzerland – named as the spa which features in the movie – prior to the Presidential election, while other stories took in subjects like abortion and vaccination.

However, all were fictitious.

One marketing executive, who asked to remain anonymous, told Variety: “We now live in a time where things are really turbulent and movies really are about an escape and that to me is the false, difficult note here.

“You are trying to relate your movie to a current event — which I get — but it’s a current event that most people are trying to turn away from.”

Another ‘veteran marketing official’, who it was stressed does not work for a competing studio, added that the move was ‘monumentally stupid’.

“On moral level, I give it an F. On an execution level, I give it an F,” they said.

“We don’t need more fake news stories. We don’t need more lies right now. There is already plenty of that out on the web. It’s already hard enough for people.”

The campaign took a pretty hefty battering on Twitter too, being branded as ‘tone deaf’.

Others have called for a boycott of the movie:

The sites, which appear to have now been taken down, had linked to the movie’s website.

Directed by Gore Verbinski, the psychological horror movie is set in a ‘mysterious wellness centre’ in the Swiss Alps where the miraculous treatments it claims to provide are not all they seem to be.

It stars Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs and Mia Goth.

So far, reviews for the movie have been underwhelming.

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