10 Films That Had To Be Altered Because Of Real Life Tragedies

Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad is a 2013 crime thriller starring Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn and Emma Stone. The story is loose take on the trials and tribulations of the LAPD officers and detectives that formed a group called the Gangster Squad unit to combat notorious Jewish mob boss Mickey Cohen and his gang during the 1940s and 50s.

The first Gangster Squad trailer was aired on May 9, 2012, though when James Holmes opened fire at a Colorado cinema during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises on July 20, killing 12 people and injuring 70, it was immediately pulled. Unfortunately, the trailer happened to include a scene from the film in which moviegoers are gunned down with submachine guns in a Chinese movie theatre.

The planned 2012 release date was pushed back to the following year, and an initial statement from the filmmakers promised that the scene would either be played down and moved to a different part of the film or simply removed all together. In the end, the latter option proved to be the right one. The cast reunited to re-shoot the main action sequence of the film, with the new scene, while still set in Chinatown, involving an open conflict as opposed to the planned cinema massacre.