As of last night The King's Speech has earned $106,891,271 in domestic box office sales. For those that don't know, the $100 million mark is typically seen as the ultimate mark of success, and it's even better when a movie made for only $15 million hits that same mark. Going even further, one could easily make the argument that thanks to overwhelming Oscar buzz, everyone who was ever going to see The King's Speech in theaters already has. These are just a couple of the reasons why the re-edited version of the film is complete bullshit.
As previously reported, Variety has revealed that the MPAA has officially given an edited version of The King's Speech a PG-13 rating. Before the film was first released back in December, it was given an R-rating due to "some language," namely two scenes in which King George VI says a string of curses in order to overcome his stutter. The decision made by the Weinstein Company to edit the film has been the subject of much controversy in recent weeks with both director Tom Hooper and actress Helena Bonham Carter denouncing the idea. Harvey Weinstein was first inspired to try and censor the film after seeing the numbers out of Britain and believing that they came as a result of entire families going to see the movie (it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that it's a piece of British history, could it Harv?) The article doesn't say how the film has been changed, but there will be a new advertising campaign for the release of the PG-13 film that explicitly says that the film has been edited for a new rating and the R-rated version of the film will be removed from theaters once the censored version arrives.
Having already gone on an extended rant about this before I don't want to waste your time by repeating myself, so instead I'll just say this: censoring The King's Speech is move done for nothing more than greed and selfishness that will only give the MPAA more power and hurt the integrity of the artform. This is bullshit and I encourage anyone that cares even a little about the film world to boycott this new release.
