Gangster Squad to debut after reality intervened

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Gangster Squad director Ruben Fleischer was stepping out of the shower on the night of July 20 last year when he received a chilling phone call from a studio executive at Warner Bros. There had been a deadly shooting at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. The studio was pulling the trailer for its Gangster Squad movie.

The problem was that the preview, which had been scheduled to debut before some showings of the latest Batman film that weekend, featured a peek at a pivotal moment in the 1940s true-crime romp when Los Angeles mobsters ruthlessly shoot into a movie theatre audience.

Thus began an arduous odyssey to the screen of a film loosely based on violence 60 years ago impacted by the real-life violence of today - from the Colorado massacre that forced the reshooting of a key scene, through the country's mourning following the Connecticut elementary school shooting last month, to this week's replaying of the July theatre horror in a Colorado courtroom just as the film prepares to finally open on Friday.

Fleischer couldn't initially process what was happening in that moment when he was on the phone last summer but eventually, everyone involved with Gangster Squad agreed: The scene was just too similar and had to be cut - not just from the trailer, but also from the movie, which was set for release two months later.