00:00I've seen men build weapons that I couldn't even imagine.
00:04Run Tomatoes has denounced a Facebook group attempting to flood its site with poor
00:08audience scores for Disney and Marvel Studios' Black Panther. The superhero movie,
00:13which opens in theaters February 16, is a bold move by Marvel and Disney in featuring
00:17a virtually all-black cast. Anticipation is high, with one major tracking service
00:21predicting a $130 million-plus domestic debut. Other box office observers believe
00:27that numbers could even climb to $150 million. In a statement on Thursday,
00:31the film scoring site said,
00:57The Facebook group goes by the name Down With Disney's Treatment of Franchises and its
01:01Fanboys. Recently, the group created an event called Give Black Panther a Rotten
01:06Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it brought in 3,700 participants. In December,
01:11the same group claimed it waged a campaign to flood Rotten Tomatoes with poor reviews
01:15of Disney and Lucasfilm's Star Wars The Last Jedi. The group makes unsubstantiated claims
01:20that Disney somehow manipulated the press into creating negative buzz for Warner Bros. DC
01:24movies and says the Black Panther campaign is its response.
01:28Not long after Rotten Tomatoes issued its statement, the group's Facebook page appeared
01:32to have been deactivated. Facebook could not immediately be reached for comment.
01:36After the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in summer 2017,
01:40Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg vowed to curb hate speech on the social media platform.
01:46Directed by Ryan Coogler, Black Panther stars Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa
01:49slash Black Panther alongside Lupita Nyong'o, Michael B. Jordan, Daniel Kaluuya,
01:54Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forrest Whitaker and Andy Serkis.
01:58Let us know what you think about these campaigns targeting the Rotten Tomatoes site
02:02in the comments. For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Lyndsey Rodrigues.
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