Theater pranks audience by playing La La Land in Moonlight screening

• Danny Pape


• 1 Mar 2017

A theater in London had the perfect response to the Oscars’ envelope fiasco, by ‘mistakingly’ showing La La Land in a screening of Moonlight.

Staff at the Rio in Dalston took the opportunity to play the prank following the blunder on Sunday, which saw La La Land incorrectly named as Best Picture, instead of actual winner Moonlight.

The cinema played 20 seconds of La La Land before switching over to Moonlight, a prank which the audience loved, reportedly bursting into applause and laughter.

The Rio’s duty manager spoke to Time Out about the practical joke:

 “It wasn’t the actual feature film, but a few seconds from a teaser trailer. Then we shut it down, and did a bit of fumbling to make it look like we made a mistake.“ he said.

And it’s not the first theater to make light of the bizarre incident on Sunday, with Everyman Cinemas also having some fun with it:

Warren Beatty, who was handed the wrong envelope, is hoping for the Academy to “publicly clarify what happened as soon as possible.”

And you can see the awkward moment for yourself below and the hilarious reactions to it here.