A new television spot for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button aired during the Olympics on Sunday night. A crappy version has shown up online and is embedded below.

I’m excited to see this movie, but I’ve been hearing all sorts of troubling things coming out of the post production of the project. Most movie journalists are afraid to report on what is going on behid the scenes, because it’s very gossipy. You’ll see little slips like, Anne Thompson writes “The early word on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: again, David Fincher has handed in a movie to Paramount that is quite long. That hurt his last pic for Paramount, Zodiac.” The film has begun screening to test audiences. One review that appeared on AICN read:

“The film starts out amazingly. The story itself won’t have any trouble reeling people in because Fincher is a great storyteller and the source material is top notch. However, I felt this film suffers from the same mistake Zodiac suffered from: things fell apart toward the end. The film is somewhere near three hours. By an hour and a half/forty five, the audience was getting restless. I could hear them squirming in their seats in front and behind me. The last hour is ultimately weighed down by a lot of repetition that has to do with the romance between Pitt and Blanchett. The film is truly great up until the final hour where things begin to feel muddled and unnecessary.”

There is a bigger story going on behind the scenes…