According to a Washington post article by Sue Zeidler, a new movie starring Justin Timberlake and everyone’s new favorite Batman, Ben Affleck, is set to be released portraying the dark underbelly of online poker and it has caught the disdain of industry professionals. The movie, Runner Runner, casts Timberlake as a college student who feels he was cheated by Affleck, who plays an “offshore entrepreneur.”
“People very well could get the wrong idea,’ said John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance. ‘Not all offshore operators are unregulated bad guys. This is a dramatization, let’s be clear about that. It shows what could be happening in a worst-case scenario.”
With the likelihood of the legalization of online poker becoming more real, the online poker industry is doing damage control to make sure that the film is put into context. In fact, as the Zeidler article notes, several pro-online poker organizations are preaching the benefits of a highly regulated system and how the movie shows why it’s important.
Alan Feldman, a MGM spokesman, says: “Hollywood has a way of glamorizing everything up to and including vampires. This is a movie that highlights a part of the Internet that has real downside unless governments act”.
Only time will tell if the movie makes the casual observer gain a negative perspective of online poker or if it leads to stricter regulations.
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