Similar to Simpsons Episode #1445 where the town of Springfield was kept up with calls from Happy Dude, customers of Verizon Wireless are also not so cheerful. A lawsuit has been filed against Feature Films for Families for calling approximately 500,000 customers over a 10 day period in February.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone believe an auto dialler was used to bombarded customers about movie “The Velveteen Rabbit,” featuring voice-overs by Ellen Burstyn, Jane Seymour and Tom Skerritt. The lawsuit comes at a bad time for the movie which opens this weekend, with plans to release on DVD next month. The calls have been coming from Utah based Feature Films for Families. Their LA based distributor Family1Films specializes in G rated movies including “Christy: Finding Faith” and “A Fairy Tale Christmas”.

If anyone is receiving calls about this, one source of information is IMDb. One comment states, “there was some statement of a “producer’s guarantee” that I would enjoy the film or they would send me a copy of a DVD from their film library.” Jeffrey Nelson a spokesperson for the wireless carrier stated that “we go after telemarketers with a vengeance. The issue here is not the content of the telemarketing calls — the issue is the telemarketing calls. It’s simply illegal.”

[via The Wall Street Journal]