The Watch (2012)

Trayvon Martin Case

In March of 2012, seventeen-year old Trayvon Martin was shot by a Florida captain of his neighborhood watch, who claimed it was in self defense. Trayvon Martin was African-American and early reports claimed the shooter was white (though he later turned out to be Latino). Accusations arose that the shooting was racially motivated and the Black Panthers put a price on the watch captain's head.

This was terrible news for the movie then known as Neighborhood Watch. The first trailer had just been released and featured such now disturbing scenes as the Jonah Hill character, playing a neighborhood watchman, firing a finger gun at a small child. The first action of the film's marketing team was to completely reform their marketing strategy. While the original plan was to not show the alien side of the story until a month before the film's release, they then decided to make the sci-fi aspect a front-and-center selling point. Then, in May, as the Trayvon Martin case still continued to garner headlines, the movie's title was changed to the less specific The Watch.