Lionsgate must firmly believe that any controversy, no matter how shameless, is good publicity. While this approach generally has worked for the studio, we’re crossing our fingers for a backfire this time around. Disaster Movie hits theaters tomorrow, which is also the 3rd anniversary that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans:

“Around these Katrina-scarred parts, Aug. 29 is still — and will be for some time — a black-armband kind of day,” criticized Mike Scott, the movie writer for the local newspaper The Times-Picayune. “For Lionsgate studios, however, Aug. 29 isn’t quite as sacred. For them, the third anniversary of the day the levees were breached and New Orleans slipped under is something on the order of perfect timing: a ripped-from-the-headlines release date.” Lionsgate is quick to point out that the pic’s disaster isn’t meteorological; it’s an incoming meteor and claims the opening date is an unfortunate coincidence. “The film does not depict or parody any actual natural disaster, and the release date of ‘Disaster Movie’ is in no way a reference to or joke about the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina,” read a studio statement prepared for The Times-Picayune. As the newspaper noted, “That’s a hard line to swallow. Tasteless humor and B-movie comedies have their place. But this confluence of dates isn’t just a cheap laugh. It’s a cheap shot to an entire region still digging out from an all-too-real disaster.”

Oh, and guess who, quite fittingly, appears in this piece of crap movie? Kim Kardashian, who is so incredibly sensitive that, despite the fact that her father was a member of O.J. Simpson’s “dream team,” she chose to attend an event for the Nicole Brown Foundation at Playboy mansion. This week, Kim dramatically sliced her own foot open and the resultant carnage involved “so much blood, it looked like a murder scene.” Nice.