David Manning (fictitious writer)

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David Manning was a fictitious film critic, created by a marketing executive working for Sony Corporation around July 2000 to give consistently good reviews for releases from Sony subsidiary Columbia Pictures. Several blurbs posted under the name "David Manning" were written for the medieval action/drama A Knight's Tale (citing Heath Ledger as "this year's hottest new star!") and Rob Schneider's comedy The Animal ("Another winner!"), ^[1] the latter which generally received very poor reviews amongst real critics.

1 Trivia
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

He often signed as Dave Manning and falsely claimed to be a writer for the Ridgefield Press. Newsweek reporter John Horn discovered that the Ridgefield Press (the newspaper where Manning supposedly had been working) had never heard of him. He disclosed the truth about Manning in June 2001.^[1] The article came around the same time as an announcement that Sony had used employees posing as moviegoers in television commercials to praise Mel Gibson's film The Patriot. These occurrences, in tandem, raised questions and controversy about ethics in movie marketing practices.

In 2004 a parody commercial featuring Manning had Manning giving Garfield two thumbs up aired on television^{[citation needed]}, even though the film Garfield was distributed by 20th Century Fox, not Columbia. Most people said the parody was a stealth advertisement for the movie because they were both released around the same time.^{[citation needed]} The parody was shown on TV and said "No matter how bad your film is, don't worry because Manning will have something good to say!". The parody seemingly stopped airing on TV in August 2004, most believe because of legal issues or that the movie was no longer in theaters^{[citation needed]}. The movie was released to stores a few months later.

On 3 August 2005, Sony made an out-of-court settlement^[2] and agreed to refund $5 to anyone who saw Hollow Man, The Animal, The Patriot, A Knight's Tale or Vertical Limit in American theatres between 3 August 2000 and 31 October 2001.

[edit] Trivia

A real-life David Manning works as a film reviewer and features writer for The Nelson Mail newspaper in Nelson, New Zealand. [1]

David Manning is a friend of the Sony marketing person responsible for the insertions.^[1] The marketing person chose The Ridgefield Press as the reviewer's newspaper because the friend was from Ridgefield, Connecticut.^{[citation needed]}