'The Kite Runner' is delayed to protect child stars

OK, this is the lede on the internet.

'The Kite Runner' is delayed to protect child stars Paramount Vantage is delaying the movie's release to get its three schoolboy stars out of Kabul, Afghanistan.

Obviously laudatory. Ah, but there's more.

The studio distributing "The Kite Runner," a tale of childhood betrayal, sexual predation and ethnic tension in Afghanistan, is delaying the film's release to get its three schoolboy stars out of Kabul — perhaps permanently — in response to fears that they could be attacked for their enactment of a culturally inflammatory rape scene.

Executives at the distributor, Paramount Vantage, are contending with issues stemming from the rising lawlessness in Kabul in the year since the boys were cast.

The boys and their relatives are now accusing the filmmakers of mistreatment, and warnings have been relayed to the studio from Afghan and American officials and aid workers that the movie could aggravate simmering enmities between the politically dominant Pashtun and the long-oppressed Hazara.

In an effort to prevent not only a public-relations disaster but also possible violence, studio lawyers and marketing bosses have employed a stranger-than-fiction team of consultants. In August they sent a retired Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism operative in the region to Kabul to assess the dangers facing the child actors. And on Sunday a Washington-based political adviser flew to the United Arab Emirates to arrange a safe haven for the boys and their relatives.

"If we're being overly cautious, that's O.K.," Karen Magid, a lawyer for Paramount, said. "We're in uncharted territory."

In interviews, more than a dozen people involved in the studio's response described grappling with vexing questions: testing the limits of corporate responsibility, wondering who was exploiting whom and pondering the price of on-screen authenticity.

Why can't the fucking world be black and white? I'm tired of these shades of gray. Who did what to whom? Is the government pressuring the boys and their families? Were the filmmakers baddies? Was I involved? Scratch that last question. I wasn't even there.

Via IHT.