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Kirsten Dunst and Joel Edgerton attend the Vanity Fair and HBO dinner at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Cannes on the weekend.
Credit: Getty Images
Guests at the Hotel du Cap in Cannes on Friday feared for their lives when six masked men in militia uniforms pulled up at the property in a boat at lunchtime.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, when hotel guests saw the boat, which bore a black flag with a white symbol on it, many screamed and ran from the deck where they were dining, obviously thinking a terrorist attack was about to take place.
As it turns out the incident was just a publicity stunt by a French internet company, who apparently didn’t think it was a bad idea despite Europe and especially France being on high terror alert. Security drills were carried out in the town ahead of the film festival as it was considered a potential target for attack by a terror group.
As a spokesperson for the Hotel du Cap put it to The Hollywood Reporter, the stunt was “just a bad joke – a really bad one.” Making it in especially poor taste was that it was Friday the 13th – the Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November also happened on a Friday the 13th.
Hindsight is a valuable thing, and a spokesperson for the internet company, Oraxy, expressed remorse following the unsettling event.
“It was definitely not planned to look like a terrorist attack. The owners [of Oraxy] feel very badly about it. It wasn’t meant to frighten people.”
Call us cynical, but we doubt there’s too much regret at Oraxy HQ today, with the brand being talked about around the world – the desired outcome of any PR stunt. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but this incident surely pushes that ‘truth’ to the limit. Many French and others are unlikely to see the funny side.
