Looks like Maggie Gyllenhaal's film career activism goes beyond teaching women how to have an orgasm; her new movie Won't Back Down, about a parent who goes head-to-head with a teacher's union, may have sparked a million-dollar ad campaign for the United Federation of Teachers.
The campaign, which will bump up advertising on NY1, ABC, NBC and other local channels, began yesterday, coinciding with the the film's release. And while Michael Mulgrew, the president of the federation, told the Times that plans for the ad campaign had been in place since before the end of the last school year, he did make sure to maintain that Won't Back Down, which also stars Viola Davis, was an inaccurate depiction of union bureaucracy. "The film is a work of fiction," Mulgrew told the Times. "It's like the Titanic didn't sink."
The campaign, which also comes at the heels of the first Chicago Teachers Union strike in 25 years, costs $1 million and will run this 30-second commercial during popular shows like "Good Morning America" and "Saturday Night Live," as well as this Wednesday's presidential debate:
And the American Federation of Teachers has also ratcheted up their PR work this week, with the president, Randi Weingarten, putting out a 2,000+ word statement againstWe Won't Back Down and appearing on CNN. Meanwhile, fiction or not, all that union drama hasn't done much to help with the film's critical reception—it was generally panned by reviewers, drumming up a measly 33 percent Rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes.
