Fox goes ape over ITV poster

Monkey has helped boost ITV Digital subscriptions

A giant publicity poster for ITV Digital which parodied the film Planet of the Apes has been withdrawn temporarily because of complaints from film studio Fox.

The 22-metre high poster was put up on the facade of Capital Radio's offices in Leicester Square, London, next door to the Odeon cinema where the première of the Fox film took place on Tuesday night.

The poster is a homage to Planet of the Apes

ITV digital spokesman

It showed a monkey puppet character used by ITV Digital in its recent promotion campaign to raise awareness of its change of name from Ondigital.

The puppet was shown in a costume reminiscent of those in the blockbuster film.

Management at Fox were understood to be concerned that owner Rupert Murdoch, who was due to attend the film's London première, would not like the advert, reported the MediaGuardian website.

The poster was taken down just hours before stars were due to arrive for the première.

'Media partner'

A spokeswoman for Capital Radio told BBC News Online: "The poster was a deal between us and ITV Digital. Fox were happy with the poster until they saw the image.

"We did not know what the image was going to be."

Planet of the Apes opens in the UK on 17 August

She added: "We are a media partner of Fox and have done a lot of promotion for the movie and so we agreed to take it down.

"ITV is upset about it because it was there for the première."

The poster of the puppet, known as Monkey, was up on the building for about eight hours and is due to be put back up on Thursday.

An ITV Digital spokesman told BBC News Online: "The poster is an homage to Planet of the Apes or Planets of the Monkeys, as Monkey likes to call it."

The spokesman said the Monkey character had proved very popular and that subscription numbers had increased since the company changed its name, although he declined to give exact figures.