"Woke up to 100's of e-mails and calls from all over the world. ... Crazzzzy day." Such was the experience Tuesday of Mark Castaldo, the man who founded California-based Destiny Pictures Productions. Behind the flurry of interest was the four-minute "movie trailer" that President Trump played for Kim Jong Un (watch it here); it's credited to a company of that name. Except Castaldo had nothing to do with it. It was apparently an aspirational name dreamed up by the actual makers of the video: the National Security Council, reports the Guardian. A rep for the NSC did confirm the video originated with the NSC but wouldn't comment on the choice of wording. A former NSC rep tells the paper, "From my understanding, they were just using 'Destiny Pictures' as a play on words. It just so happens there's a studio by that name in California."
Trump himself addressed the video Tuesday and played it for reporters, noting it was brought to Singapore on an iPad. "I showed it to them today. .... Toward the end of the meeting. I think he loved it. ... I thought they were fascinated by it. I thought it was well done. I showed it to you because that is the future." Writing for Forbes, Michael Shellenberger saw value in the video, writing, "As cheesy as the video is, it's precisely the vision of a high-energy planet that poor nations generally, and North Korea particularly, need right now." The New York Times rounded up plenty of feedback good (a "clever move") and bad ("I was gobsmacked") here, but it also went a step further. Its Opinions video team created a spoof of Trump's video that it calls a "more honest makeover"; watch it here. (More Kim Jong Un stories.)
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