Actor and producer David Oyelowo’s new fantasy film Come Away, a re-imagined prequel to the “Peter Pan” and “Alice in Wonderland” stories, has been the subject of review bombings on YouTube and IMDb.
Review bombing is a relatively new internet phenomenon in which users leave large quantities of negative reviews on a film or published work, often affecting its box office or earnings.
A flood of fake reviews were left for Come Away to deter people from watching the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In order to prevent racist comments about the movie, Amazon-owned IMDb made the decision to remove user ratings.
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Oyelowo, who produced the film alongside co-star Angelina Jolie, told THR he warned IMDb he had experienced this type of review bombing before with his 2016 film, A United Kingdom.
Come Away centers on a biracial family in which Oyelowo and Jolie play the parents of Peter and Alice, who try to help their parents overcome a tragic family loss by embarking on their iconic adventures in Neverland and Wonderland.
“For a film that hasn’t been released yet — the ratings are supposed to be based on the people watching the films — it was clear there was something about the tone and nature of the film that was bumping certain people,” Oyelowo told THR. “One of the first things I did was to make IMDb aware of this because I know it had an effect on A United Kingdom five years ago.”
Oyelowo said he felt the negative reviews had more to do with the children in the film being non-white than the actual content of the movie.
“The film is not rooted in race, at all. It so happens to be a family the likes of which would and could have historically existed in that time in British history, yet not the norm of what you are used to seeing,” he explained.
Come Away will be released on November 13 in theaters and On Demand.
Watch the trailer below.