By all accounts,Ben Stiller and his fellow producers had no idea they were basing 30 Minutes Or Less - a black comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg as a pizza delivery guy - on a true story.
So what, I hear you say, a fair few films feature pizza delivery guys... true, but not all of them died courtesy of an exploding bomb they had strapped to their chest.
To recap slightly, 30 Minutes Or Less is "about a pizza delivery boy who's abducted, outfitted with a bomb, and forced to rob a bank..." According to TMZ, back in 2003, "46-year-old pizza man Brian Wells died when a bomb strapped around his neck exploded after he tried to rob a bank."
Upon hearing this film is being released, a friend of Wells said: "It's stupid the movie is even coming out... producers can go jump in a lake for all I care! They're blowing something up (an unfortunate turn of phrase, but he's upset, we'll leave him be) that should never have even happened in the first place and now they wanna make a joke out of it... it's really tragic."
Yeah, not such a hilarious premise for a comedy now. I tell you what is funny though, coincidences. They're a laugh riot. Here's what Columbia Pictures has to say on the matter: "Neither the filmmakers nor the stars of 30 Minutes or Less were aware of this crime prior to their involvement in the film." And what of the writers? "The writers were vaguely familiar with what had occurred and wrote an original screenplay that does not mirror the real-life tragedy."
A typical Hollywood ending to look forward to so; Eisenberg will probably be saved from imploding by Boomer, the lucky labrador from independence Day.
The L.A. premiere of 30 Minutes Or Less took place last night, and was attended by this lot.