"A Dog's Purpose" is set to premiere Jan. 27, but it is still battling publicity surrounding a controversial video that was obtained and posted by TMZ last week.
The video shows a 2-year-old German shepherd named Hercules struggling with a person who appears to be a trainer as rough waves churned in a pool.
Producers of the film initially told TMZ on Wednesday hours after the video surfaced that the dog was fine, and the American Humane Association, which oversees safety guidelines for animal actors on movie sets, placed a representative who had been on set on leave.
On Thursday, Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment, the distributor and creator of the film, announced that they canceled the Hollywood premiere of the film and the associated press junket.
Despite a statement from W. Bruce Cameron, the author of the book on which the film is based and the co-screenwriter, in which he questions the video, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has called for a boycott of the film and has criticized Birds & Animals Unlimited, the supplier of animal actors for the movie.
Gavin Polone, a columnist for The Hollywood Reporter and the producer of the movie, wrote an op-ed in THR, expressing concern over the involvement of AHA in the shoot, and criticized PETA for its response.
Polone said the dog had been trained to perform a stunt in which he appears to drag a woman to safety from a specific point at the set, but that point was moved for one of the shots, which he said made Hercules uncomfortable.
"That, evidentially, is what caused him to be spooked," Polone said. "When the dog didn’t want to do the scene from the new position, they cut, though not soon enough, and then went back to the original position. The dog was comfortable and went in on his own and they shot the scene. The TMZ video only shows the unfinished take of when the dog was on the right side."
Polone did take issue with how Hercules was forced into the water and with another instance, shown in the video, in which the dog's head becomes submerged underwater.
"These two things are absolutely inexcusable and should never have happened," he said, adding that the AHA representative on set and the person who was running the set that day "should have also intervened immediately on both of those parts of the filming. … Those individuals should be held accountable and never used again by that studio or its affiliates."
Polone's full response can be read on The Hollywood Reporter.
On Monday, PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange said in a statement to Deadline Hollywood that her organization's investigation of Birds & Animals Unlimited "revealed that dogs were kept in barren kennels and forced to sleep outside in the cold, animals were denied adequate food so that they would be hungry while being trained to do tricks, and other animals were denied adequate veterinary care and made to live in filthy conditions."
Lane also responded to Polone's op-ed:
Those who made the movie want it to succeed, but even the film's producer, Gavin Polone, admitted that the incident should not have occurred, so for him to offer alternative facts about what countless people have now watched and condemned is a form of spin that even the best filmmaker couldn't pull off.
Birds & Animals Unlimited issued a response to Deadline Monday that said in part, the "falsely edited video" depicted something that did not happen, "nor would it ever occur under the supervision of our animal trainers."
The statement went on to detail the process of the stunt performed by Hercules:
Whenever Hercules was in the water there were two trainers poolside, one trainer in the water, a safety diver, as well as stunt personnel. The day before the scene was filmed, Hercules and his trainers did a comprehensive rehearsal at the pool location with safety and stunt teams to make certain that safety measures were in place to insure that the dog was not put in any danger.
The company said it is "currently reviewing available footage of these scenes and is evaluating its legal options."
Birds & Animals Unlimited's full statement, as well as Lange's full statement, can be read at Deadline.com.
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