20th Century Fox / Screencap via YouTube

Movie distributor 20th Century Fox and film studio Regency have tapped into the fake news machine to market A Cure for Wellness, pushing stories that subtly promote the thriller.

While relying on all the usual mechanics of film promotion - including direct print and online advertising, ads on transport, and a pricey trailer spot at last week's NFL Super Bowl - the companies also resorted to more subversive techniques to push the film.


This included publishing fake news stories referencing names and events of the Gore Verbinski-directed movie, which sees Dane DeHaan investigating a disturbing convalescence facility in Switzerland. Sites spreading the stories would use key phrases from the film, or have ads for it placed 'coincidentally' around the page.

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Stories included reports that Lady Gaga would praise Muslim communities during her Super Bowl performance - the erroneous stories claimed she would say Islamophobia was "a sickness inside us" and her music was "the cure" - and that Donald Trump had met with Vladimir Putin at a Swiss resort, prior to the US election. The studios seeded the stories by working with an unnamed fake news creator, and hosting entire websites such as 'houstonleader.com' and 'sacramentodispatch.com'. Going to either domain now redirects to the movie's official promotion site.


After online reactions to the stunt proved negative, Fox and Regency owned up to the promotion, though stopped short of apologising. The studios told Deadline "A Cure for Wellness is a movie about a 'fake' cure that makes people sicker. As part of this campaign, a 'fake' wellness site healthandwellness.co was created and we partnered with a fake news creator to publish fake news."

However, while the original fake news stories have been taken offline - both the Trump/Putin and Lady Gaga fictions now link to 404 pages on the A Cure for Wellness site - other reactionary sites are still sharing them as real news. This is a case of movie promotion going awry, and making the task of identifying real news that much harder.

The spread of fake news has become an increasing problem, influencing real world politics. After the apparent impact deliberately misleading stories had on both the EU referendum in the UK and the election of Trump in the US, Facebook is testing new fake news tools ahead of Germany's election, while the UK's Culture, Media and Sport Committee will investigate how the spread of fake news is leading to the "public being fed propaganda and untruths".