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In the wake of the outrage that stemmed from the placement of a poster promoting Naomi Watts' movie Diana near the entrance to the Paris tunnel where Princess Diana died, the 4-foot by 6-foot ad has been taken down.
"It was requested that the poster be removed Monday afternoon, and we received confirmation that it had been removed Monday evening," a spokesperson for French distributor Le Pacte told The Hollywood Reporter.
The sign, featuring Watts dressed as Diana, had been prominently displayed by the Pont de l'Alma tunnel, just feet away from the gold Flame of Liberty statue, which has become known as an unofficial memorial for the Princess of Wales.
It was in August 1997 when Diana and boyfriend Dodi al Fayed, along with their driver, were killed in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel.
"I really don't have any words to describe how I feel about this cynical and shameless attempt to publicize a film that should never have been made," Rosa Monckton, a friend of Diana's, told the Daily Mail when the poster initially went up. "To have made a film so speculative and as this is disgusting enough, but to then advertise it on the spot at which she died is despicable."
Meanwhile, Diana, which has been met with less-than-favorable reviews, opens today in France.
Why not pair it with a showing of that documentary by Keith Allen? Guess he should expect to be knighted soon, but this type of pairing has worked well in the past, such as when 'My Neighbor Totoro' was shown with 'Graveyard of the Fireflies'. It helped the new Ghibli studio get started, and the EU does want to promote job creation don't they? Why not repeat a success instead of always repeating mistakes? If they are mistakes, such as this ad campaign, for surely someone said something along the lines of whether this is a good idea?