There's a Small Change in the New Trailer for 'The Butler'

If you were gearing up for more plot details from the upcoming film starring Forest Whitaker as a White House butler you may be disappointed, but there's an important change to its new trailer since the one released in May: the title. Yes, you'll see at the end of the trailer that instead of The Butler it's Lee Daniels' The Butler

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If you were gearing up for more plot details from the upcoming film starring Forest Whitaker as a White House butler you may be disappointed, but there's an important change to its new trailer since the one released in May: the title. Yes, you'll see at the end of the trailer that instead of The Butler it's Lee Daniels' The Butler.

This change was a resolution to the positively petty, but heated battle between The Weinstein Company and Warner Bros. over the movie's title. Warner Bros. had charged that TWC wasn't allowed to use the title The Butler because of 1916 silent short movie with that name. Though the Motion Picture Association of America's Title Registration Bureau awarded a victory to Warner Bros., TWC fought back with the services of lawyer David Boies and the help of civil rights leaders. The new amended title is the result of an appeal late last week in which the MPAA ruled that its original ruling, which disallowed the film from using the word "butler" at all, was too harsh, according to Deadline. The caveat is that the "Lee Daniels'" part of the new title must be 75 percent of the size of "The Butler," which is why the logo now looks a little awkward. TWC also has some fines to pay.

In the meantime, the company has been reissuing promotional materials before their July 26 deadline like posters and the above trailer so as to properly display the title. Here, for instance, a new poster, next to the old one.

As Christopher Rosen at the Huffinton Post notes, the new one looks "pretty familiar." It's just a little more crowded. We can all agree though that we're just going to refer to this movie as The Butler, right? Okay. Good.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.