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UPDATE: MPAA Approves ‘Fed Up’ Key Art After “Reconsideration”

Radius-TWC Touts Docu-Cred And Reveals VOD/Digital Numbers For Two Recent Docs

UPDATED Wednesday, 10:09 PM: After “a reconsideration” of its earlier hard stance against the Key Art for the documentary Fed Up citing ‘offensive language’, the MPAA’s advertising administration reversed its decision late Wednesday night and will now allow the art for the Radius-TWC docu without any alterations, a source close to the situation told Deadline.

So, TWC’s F U is OK. TY MPAA.

PREVIOUSLY, Wednesday, 5:07 P.M.: The MPAA has rejected the key art for Fed Up, a documentary film about the fast food and junk food industries which reveals how children and parents are being fed a bill of goods by food manufacturers. Distributor Radius-TWC has vowed to fight the decision on appeal. The poster featured here shows two M&M’s with the letters F and U next to each other. One wonders if they purposely pushed the envelope knowing that the poster might not pass muster with the MPAA, which cited the key art’s “offensive language.” Nothing like a good controversy to help marketing. Yeah, well, who cares, when the topic is about children’s health in this nation. ”If only Congress and the FDA cared as much about protecting Americans’ lives as the MPAA cares about suppressing our poster, we wouldn’t be facing the greatest health epidemic of our time,” said Radius-TWC co-presidents Tom Quinn and Jason Janego in a statement. The MPAA could not be reached for comment.

The film, which is executive produced by Katie Couric, who also narrates the film, is a Radius/TWC presentation after The Weinstein Company label acquired it this year at Sundance. It features several noteworthy people talking about sugar’s impact on the health of children. Included are former President Bill Clinton, Harvard Medical School associate professor in pediatrics Dr. David Ludwig, former FDA commissioner David Kessler, Sen. Tom Harkin, former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, and food author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma). One of the producers of Fed Up is Laurie David, who also produced the 2006 Academy Award-winning documentary film An Inconvenient Truth.

Related: Hot Trailer: Food Docu ‘Fed Up’

The film is reminiscent of the Oscar-nominated film Food, Inc. (I worked on the press materials for that after I left journalism years ago), which revealed the underbelly of the powerful industrialized food industry which has been hidden from the American consumer … it’s a world of growth-hormone, GMO and other corn-based Frankenfood. That bowed in 2008.

Fed Up will be released in theaters May 9. Whether the poster will change its colors (or, in this case, its letters) remains to be seen.

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