An Alt-right group called “Down with Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and Its Fanboys” planned rather maliciously to drive down the ratings of the upcoming Black Panther movie on Rotten Tomatoes.
Their plan to achieve this was to ask its members to deliberately give it low scores so as to discourage people from seeing the movie.
The Facebook group is a coalition of white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis who seemed to take offence at the Black-centric nature of the Black Panther movie.
The page has been shutdown by Facebook with the members unable to log on to the website.
This is not the group’s first rodeo either as they also sabotaged the Rotten Tomatoes rating for The Last Jedi. According to the group’s moderator, Star Wars producers were introducing more female characters, and that one of the main male characters was “in danger of being turned gay”.
Black Panther is the most hotly anticipated movie of the year so far with not only the black community excited about it, but comic fans in general.
Marvel has had a stellar record of churning out amazing MCU movies with the success of Thor: Ragnarok and Spiderman: Homecoming.
The news of this potential sabotage was condemned by many on social media who couldn’t quite believe the gall.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Rotten Tomatoes said: “While we respect our fans’ diverse opinions, we do not condone hate speech.”
Black Panther will be in cinemas on the 16th of February.