The National Security Council has claimed credit for the film President Trump showed North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un right before their much-anticipated meeting, following a confusing series of events with a California production company.
“The video was created by the National Security Council to help the president demonstrate the benefits of complete denuclearization, and a vision of a peaceful and prosperous Korean peninsula,” NSC spokesman Garrett Marquis said in a statement.
The dramatic four-minute film, which was also shown to the media right before Trump’s press conference after his meeting with Kim, touted opportunities that could be available to North Korea in the future should he “shake the hand of peace,” and was credited to Destiny Pictures. “Destiny Pictures presents a story of opportunity. A new story. A new beginning. Out of peace. Two men, two leaders, one destiny,” the voice-over in the film said.
Destiny Pictures is a real production company in California. But Mark Castaldo, the founder of the company, said he had nothing to do with the film. “We had no involvement in the video,” he wrote in an email to TIME on Tuesday, a statement that was also posted on the company’s website. He wrote on Twitter Tuesday that he woke up to hundreds of emails and calls across the globe.
Castaldo told TIME he thinks it was an innocent mistake. “I think that whoever made the video just used/ inserted “destiny” metaphorically and used it,” he wrote in an email. “To convey what they wanted to see or what’s in store for the future.”
With reporting by Tessa Berenson/Washington
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Write to Alana Abramson at Alana.Abramson@time.com