Wingnut Group Denounces Bully Makers For "End Run" Around Rating System

After the MPAA gave Bully an R rating, its filmmakers decided to release the film today without a rating at all. In response, AMC Theatres announced that it would allow children under 17 to see the movie with a parental permission slip. All this has infuriated the Christian "watchdogs" of the entertainment industry, the Parents Television Council.

"They're doing an end-run essentially around the MPAA by encouraging theaters to show unrated movies. And I think they're setting a dangerous precedent that in the future, anytime a studio gets a rating on a movie that they don't like, they can just go ahead and release an unrated version," warns PTC's Melissa Henson. "They [will] have precedent for theaters now showing unrated films." He could have made the necessary edits to the film to secure the lower PG-13 rating so that it would be available to more teens, but he refused to do that," the PTC spokesperson notes. So she concludes this effort is more about the profits than it is about the children.