The Rio cinema in Dalston, London, pranked its audience after the notorious best picture announcement fiasco by playing a short snippet of La La Land before a screening of Moonlight, as a “mistake”.

Oliver Meek, executive director of the Rio, said that after the events on Oscar night, when La La Land was announced as winner of the best picture Academy award instead of the actual winner, Moonlight, “we thought: wouldn’t it be funny if we played a bit of La La Land?”

“We saw we still had the La La Land teaser trailer on the projector, so just before Moonlight started, at 9.15, our manager brought up La La Land. After about 20 seconds we faded it down and made it look like it had been a bungle by the projectionist: we cut the picture, but you could still hear the sound, for a few seconds, then cut that. Then we started up Moonlight as normal.”



Meek says the audience “got the gag immediately”. “There was a hush, then a huge round of applause.” However, he says the reaction following the 20-second prank has been “mindblowing”. Social media picked up on it quickly, with Meek crediting one particular tweet, from comedian Sophie Dukebox, as “getting it all started”.

Sophie Dukebox (@sophiedukebox) Props to @riocinema in #Dalston for playing the first 20 seconds of La La Land immediately before last night's screening of Moonlight pic.twitter.com/2ZLllrnPFq

The cinema has attracted global attention as a result, with stories running as far afield as Brazil, Greece and Italy, as well as the US – and Meek says the unexpected publicity has been invaluable.

“We are a small independent cinema, and I’d stress that one of the reasons we are able to do this is because we are not a chain. We can say: wouldn’t it be fun, and just do it. Something like this shows what a bit of independent spirit can do.”