A Paramount Pictures promotion for the upcoming release of Mission: Impossible: III involving newspaper racks got off to a bang over the weekend, as police mistook a device attached to a rack that played the film’s theme song for a bomb.
The studio partnered with the Los Angeles Times to transform 4,500 newspaper racks into singing machinesa first-of-its kind invention. Each time customers drop coins in the rack and open the rack door, the Mission: Impossible theme song plays.
The goal of the promotion was to turn an everyday newspaper purchase into an “extraordinary mission.” Yet when one customer saw a red plastic box with wires protruding from it attached to the rack, he thought it was a bomb and called the police, according to news reports.
The arson squad from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department responded and blew up the newspaper rack in a Los Angeles suburb last Friday. No injuries were reported. Times officials said the public wasn’t supposed to see the red boxes, news reports said.
“This was the least intended outcome,” John O’Loughlin, senior VP-planning, for the Los Angles Times, said in a statement. “We weren’t expecting anything like this.”
Despite the mix-up, the promotion continues through May 7. An additional 18,000 Los Angeles Times news racks will feature M:I:III-themed rack cards and headers promoting the film and a sweepstakes tied to the film.
To enter The Ultimate Mission sweepstakes, consumers register online at Movietickets.com/contests/mi31/mi31_default.asp. One grand-prize winner gets a seven-night trip for two to Shanghai, China, to experience first-hand the locations of M:I:III. The prize package includes airfare, hotel accommodations and a tour of M:I:III shooting locations with a member of the M:I:III crew. Ten runners-up will receive a M:I:III prize pack, including a hat, T-shirt and special edition DVD of Mission: Impossible.
The sweepstakes runs through May 14. Online materials support.
In Mission: Impossible: III, Tom Cruise returns as special agent Ethan Hunt, who faces a dangerous arms dealer while trying to keep his identity secret to protect his girlfriend. The film opens nationwide on Friday.
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