Cool Videos: Dragon Tattoo goes viral with Hard Copy report on film’s murder

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

I think David Fincher’s THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO is the kind of movie that doesn’t really need a viral campaign, especially one that treats the events in the movie as if they were real. I mean, it was a book – a rather popular book – and the fruits of someone’s brain grapes. Fiction, ya know? DRAGON TATTOO, by all accounts, looks to be a very good and very entertaining movie on its own. But OK, let’s get all “viral” and get those crazy kids on the internet all excited about this film.

So Sony Pictures and David Fincher created a fake segment from the popular early-90s tabloid news program “Hard Copy.” There are probably lots of you right now going, “Huh, wha?” and I sympathize. “Hard Copy” – if you’re too young – was a half-hour “news” program that was highly popular for a few years but eventually fizzled out when everyone came to their senses and realized it was sleazy and gross. Think like if “20/20” had a threeway with TMZ and the New York Post and it was about 100 times more outrageous than that.

But I digress. “Hard Copy” would’ve creamed their jeans with Casey Anthony and those kinds of murder cases and the conceit here with this DRAGON TATTOO video is that the show, back in the mid-90s, actually did cover the murder case at the center of the movie. It’s mostly remarkable for the amount of work that goes into making this look real, despite the fact we all know it’s fake. (It was posted to YouTube by the MouthTapedShut account. I mean, if you’re going to go through all the trouble of making look real, why officially upload it? Leak it online or something….) I actually appreciate the trail end of an actual Sunny D commercial in the beginning. Nice touch, Finch.

So if viral is your thing and you’re just really excited about DRAGON TATTOO (which you probably should be), check out the clip below.