Eighty years ago the Turkish government forced Hollywood to drop a movie project based on The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, then a best-selling novel on the Armenian Genocide by German-language author, Jew and outspoken Hitler opponent Franz Werfel. The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, originally written as a warning against Hitler through the prism of the Armenian Genocide, never saw the silver screen. Such a movie could have also raised awareness of the fate of the Jews in Nazi Germany at the time and later of the ongoing Holocaust. It could have shaped the “narrative” of the struggle against Hitler. Many have since been interested to finally turn the novel into a major production, but Turkish opposition and obstruction seemed insurmountable.
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It had taken years — and the passionate support of Armenian activist Kirk Kerkorian, who financed the film’s $100 million budget without expecting to ever make a profit — for The Promise, a historical romance set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide and starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, to reach the screen. Producers always knew it would be controversial: Descendants of the 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Empire shortly after the onset of World War I have long pressed for the episode to be recognized as a genocide despite the Turkish government’s insistence the deaths were not a premeditated extermination.
The Promise, which opens April 21, finally would bring the untold saga to a mass audience. But at the Toronto Film Festival premiere in September, producer Mike Medavoy watched the late billionaire’s carefully laid plans upended by a digital swarm that appeared out of nowhere.
Before the critics in attendance even had the chance to exit Roy Thompson Hall, let alone write their reviews, The Promise’s IMDb page was flooded with tens of thousands of one-star ratings. “All I know is that we were in about a 900-seat house with a real ovation at the end, and then you see almost 100,000 people who claim the movie isn’t any good,” says Medavoy. Panicked calls were placed to IMDb, but there was nothing the site could do. “One thing that they can track is where the votes come from,” says Eric Esrailian, who also produced the film, and “the vast majority of people voting were not from Canada. So I know they weren’t in Toronto.”
The online campaign against The Promise appears to have originated on sites like Incisozluk, a Turkish version of 4chan, where there were calls for users to “downvote” the film’s ratings on IMDb and YouTube. A rough translation of one post: “Guys, Hollywood is filming a big movie about the so-called Armenian genocide and the trailer has already been watched 700k times. We need to do something urgently.” Soon afterward, the user gleefully noted The Promise’s average IMDb rating had reached a dismaying 1.8 stars. “They know that the IMDb rating will stay with the film forever,” says Esrailian. “It’s a kind of censorship, really.”
