Gambling magazine sues over product placement gone wrong

Question for trade magazine Gambling Times: Did you really want to star in that critically thumped Vegas-set indie drama called Deal? Really?
  Execs at the publication say they did indeed want their moment on the big screen and had made a $50,000 investment in the 2008 flick to ensure a "highly visible" product placement. Now, they're suing poker player turned filmmaker Scott Lazar for $1 million for being left on the cutting room floor, or wherever the mag ended up. I say, be grateful. The movie, which starred a wooden Burt Reynolds as an old-school gambler training a newbie, scored a cellar-dwelling 3 percent vote on Rotten Tomatoes. One critic dubbed it "highly derivative, embarrassingly hollow," and another said, "There is more complexity in a sub-par episode of the Teletubbies than in anything to be found in Deal."
  As The Hollywood Reporter points out, brand integrations, and thus the lawsuits that can result from them, are becoming more common. But in this case, Gambling Times should count itself lucky that it won't forever be part of this flick and the middle-of-the-night basic-cable airings that are its future. The kicker: The movie didn't exactly hit the jackpot. In fact, just the opposite: Deal scored a piddly $78,000 at the box office during its limited run. 

—Posted by T.L. Stanley