FX Pulls Disturbing Eye-Worm Billboards for The Strain

The worm has been turned away.

Billboards for FX’s The Strain, with creepy critters crawling out (or perhaps boring into?) human eyeballs, are apparently too much for some folks to bear, and the cable network says it is replacing the ads in several locations—the signs have run in Los Angeles  and New York—with less-upsetting imagery.

The series was hatched by director Guillermo del Toro and writer Chuck Hogan and slithers onto TV screens July 13. It’s a medical thriller about parasites that turn New Yorkers into monsters. 

So far, the eyeball campaign had generated its share of angry parents and motorists but hasn’t precipitated any lawsuits. The same can’t be said for last year’s eerie “Dexter” takeover in Grand Central Terminal, which generated a complaint from a Bronx woman who claims that the “shocking and menacing” promo caused her to slip on a stairway and sustain injury.

The Strain’s ad controversy is generating plenty of buzz for the show. So if you subscribe to the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, these wormy posters have hit pay dirt.



Sylvain Chomet Latest to Gain Invite to Animate ‘The Simpsons’ Couch Gag

Th1ng director/animator Sylvain Chomet received a personal request from The Simpsons creator Matt Groening to animate the iconic “couch gag” that concludes the opening credits of the show, now entering its 26th season. Obviously, you don’t turn down a personal request from Matt Groenig, so the three-time Oscar nominee Chomet offered up a distinctly French take on the gag, which was just revealed online today.

Chomet joins an illustrious list of individuals invited by Groening to animate the sequence, including Bill Plympton, Banksy, and Guillermo Del Toro. Indeed, in recent years the couch gag has all too often overshadowed the rest of the episode. Executive producer Dominic Buttimore (Bart Simpson would have a field day with that one), a longtime collaborator, “worked closely with Chomet to create and storyboard the concept for the animation sequence, which was immediately met with ‘laughter and appreciation’ by Groening and Simpsons’ longtime show-runner/producer Al Jean. Jean went as far as to call the experience a “dream come true.”

The new couch gag (featured above) is one of the show’s best, thanks to some great jokes and Chomet’s inimitable animation style. It will air during the episode “Diggs” this Sunday, March 9th. Stick around after the jump for credits and couch gags from Plympton and Banksy. continued…

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