And the oscar goes to Harebrained Pictures

The National Security Council has said that it made the video Donald Trump showed to Kim Jong-un at their Singapore summit on Tuesday in an unorthodox effort to persuade him of the benefits of denuclearisation.

The four-minute video in Korean and English was made in the style of an extended action movie trailer and portrayed Kim and Trump as men of destiny with the future of the world in their hands.

The video, which Trump showed to the press after playing it on an iPad for Kim, is credited to “Destiny Pictures Productions”, prompting a flurry of press inquiries to a film production company of that name in California.

Mark Castaldo, the company’s founder, said in an email it had “no involvement in the video”.

“Woke up to 100’s of e-mails and calls from all over the world. Crazy” Castaldo said in a tweet, adding that he was trying to find out “why they used my company name”.

Garrett Marquis, an NSC spokesman said in a statement: “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.”

When asked about the decision to present the video as made by a non-existent company, an NSC spokesman said there would be no further comment.

“From my understanding, they were just using ‘Destiny Pictures’ as a play on words. It just so happens there’s a studio by that name in California,” said Ned Price, a former NSC spokesman.

“Leave it to this White House to fail to conduct basic due diligence. And that, of course, leaves aside the fact they thought it prudent to try to out-North-Korea North Korea in the propaganda department.

“The whole enterprise reeks of amateurism and comes off as an attempt to check the box on a harebrained idea that presumably originated in the oval office,” Price added.