10 Movie Industry Secrets You Didn't Know
4. Apple Won't Let Villains Use IPhones
Product placement is a huge and often frustrating element of filmmaking, with brands desperate to shove their wares into blockbuster movies wherever possible.
But companies are also fiercely protective of how their products are perceived, and no company has taken that to greater extremes than Apple, which flat-out refuses to allow their iPhones to be seen in the hands of even fictional villains.
While speaking about his recent movie Knives Out, Rian Johnson spilled the beans on Apple's hilariously specific demands:
"I don’t know if I should say this or not. Not because it's lascivious or something, but because it's gonna screw me on the next mystery movie that I write...Apple, they let you use iPhones in movies, but, and this is very pivotal, if you're ever watching a mystery movie, bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera."
If you watch Knives Out, you'll see that many of the film's characters are shown using iPhones, but the outright villain - whose identity we won't spoil - is never shown holding one, for fear of feeling Apple's wrath.
Hilariously, Johnson then added, "Every single filmmaker who has a bad guy in their movie that's supposed to be a secret wants to murder me right now."