Evacuate the city and engage all defenses, for the Internet’s most spiteful film group has taken aim at Black Panther.
The Facebook group, which appears to have been shut down since its formation on Wednesday, goes by the name, “Down with Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys,” and drew around 3,700 participants. It’s the same pool of asinine armchair rebels who claim to have flooded Rotten Tomatoes with negative user reviews for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, bringing the sequel’s audience score precariously close to 50 percent.
Their mission statement is alleging that Disney, through manipulation of press, created negative buzz for Warner’s movies – specifically Justice League – and is waging a war against Black Panther in response. But it’s not one they can hope to win, as Rotten Tomatoes has released an official statement denouncing the hate group, all the while confirming plans to up its defenses ahead of next week’s premiere.
Clearly attempting to curb online hate speech, RT’s statement notes that any user found guilty of intentionally meddling with Black Panther‘s review score will be banned. And rightly so.
We at Rotten Tomatoes are proud to have become a platform for passionate fans to debate and discuss entertainment and we take that responsibility seriously. While we respect our fans’ diverse opinions, we do not condone hate speech. Our team of security, network and social experts continue to closely monitor our platforms and any users who engage in such activities will be blocked from our site and their comments removed as quickly as possible.
Black Panther will finally see a release on February 16th, and when it does, analysts predict a huge four-day opening weekend for the king of Wakanda. Despite earlier estimates claiming that the Marvel spinoff would top out at $120 million, updated projections have shown that Ryan Coogler’s actioner is closer to $150 million, and therefore stands a good chance of trumping Deadpool‘s February record ($132 million) in two weeks’ time.
