Donald Trump is weighing in on the debate surrounding The Hunt movie.
The President slammed the film on Twitter on Friday after reports circulated over right-wing furor over the upcoming film — a Hunger Games-style satire where wealthy “elites” hunt rural “deplorables” for sport and wager.
The movie, starring Betty Gilpin and Hilary Swank, follows 12 strangers from conservative states who wake up in a clearing and discover they’re being hunted by rich liberals.
Tweeted Trump: “Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level, and with great Anger and Hate! They like to call themselves ‘Elite,’ but they are not Elite. In fact, it is often the people that they so strongly oppose that are actually the Elite. The movie coming out is made in order…..to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others. They are the true Racists, and are very bad for our Country!”
If anything, judging by the trailer, the Blumhouse film seems to be attempting to illustrate the widening economic divide between the haves and have-nots and villainizing the 1 percent — with its red-state characters as the movie’s victims and heroes.
As reported by THR, there’s some on-the-nose dialogue in the film itself making its political allegory even more clear:
“Did anyone see what our ratf—-er-in-chief just did?” one character in the film asks, in an apparent reference to Trump.
“At least the hunt’s coming up. Nothing better than going out to the manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables,” another replies, referring to Hillary Clinton’s term for some of Trump’s supporters.
Complicating the debate over the film’s political rhetoric are the real-life horrors of the past week, which saw mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. As a result, Universal has halted its marketing efforts for the movie.
“Out of sensitivity to the attention on the country’s recent shooting tragedies, Universal Pictures and the filmmakers of The Hunt have temporarily paused its marketing campaign and are reviewing materials as we move forward,” read a studio statement.
Universal did not immediately reply to comment on Trump’s tweet. The film is still set for a Sept. 27 release.
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