Barker Calls for Film Boycott

Game show host Bob Barker and an animal rights group want people to boycott a film in which horses jump from a 10-foot platform into an 11-foot-deep tank of water.

“Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken,” which is being filmed here, is about a woman who jumped into the ocean on horseback from a pier at Atlantic City, N.J., during the 1930s.

Lou Phillips, production executive for the movie, said producers have followed and even exceeded American Humane Assn. standards in the care of the horses, and no injuries have been reported.

The jump “may be acceptable to the producers, may be acceptable to the association, but if the horses could speak, I’d bet it would not be acceptable to them,” Barker said Tuesday.

Barker, a longtime animal rights activist, works with the Coalition to Protect Animals in Entertainment.