Theaters Ban Our ‘Sausage Party’ Cancer Ad

Sausage Party, an R-rated animated comedy, opened last Friday in 3,103 theaters across the United States and made $33.6 million. Some of those moviegoers should have seen an ad warning of sausage’s link to colorectal cancer. But movie theaters with concessions stands selling hot dogs banned our ad.

The video—which uses humor geared toward the Sausage Party audience—pokes fun to make a point: Nobody should be exposed to cancer-causing sausage and hot dogs.

We attempted to air the ad in movie theaters in Pennsylvania in the Northeast, Mississippi in the South, South Dakota in the Midwest, and Alaska in the West, the states in each region of the country where colorectal cancer death rates for men are greatest, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A recent World Health Organization report found that processed meats such as hot dogs, pepperoni, bacon, sausage, and deli meats are “carcinogenic to humans.” Each 50-gram portion of processed meat—approximately the size of a typical hot dog—eaten daily increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 21 percent.

Our message to Sausage Party viewers: Processed meats are no party.