Young People Fucking arrives in 36 theaters Friday awash with controversy — and Maple Pictures wouldn’t have it any other way.

‘It’s rare for a controversy not to help the box office,’ says John Bain, SVP of theatrical at the Toronto distributor, noting that people are curious to see what all the fuss is about. The debut feature of Vancouver director Martin Gero — and the spark that lit the C-10 fuse — will play in all major cities, while Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec City will have both English and French prints.

‘It’s often a problem to raise awareness for a Canadian film…but this one sold itself,’ he notes, though on the flip side, the distributor had to ‘overcome’ the title. Described as a sex comedy for people with experience, the film follows five couples in different and complex stages of their relationships. It stars Aaron Abrams (who co-wrote the script with Gero), Callum Blue (The Tudors) and Kristin Booth (MVP).

Maple readied a variety of posters and trailers, depending on the media outlet. And while it says it encountered virtually no problems in print, things got ‘sticky’ on the television side with Telecaster, the industry body that vets TV ads.

‘Telecaster had some issues with our TV ads and wouldn’t air them at all, even though we were quite prepared to show them post 11 p.m.,’ says Bain, noting that the trailers contained no nudity or profanities, but mainly funny sexual situations.

‘We were a little surprised,’ he adds. Bain says the company felt that a double standard was at work between ads for violent or scary films and those that have sexual content. ‘We’ve released some horror films with provocative ads and were able to run them,’ he points out.

The distributor instead decided to run a review-driven spot with mostly text and the word ‘fucking’ fuzzed out.

‘We couldn’t even put asterisks — they wanted none of that,’ says Bain. Meanwhile, posters were cleverly designed to have the ‘uck’ fall out of the title and lie at the bottom of the poster.

Young People is rated 18A in most jurisdictions.

Also opening Friday is the U.K. drama When Did You Last See Your Father?, starring Jim Broadbent and Colin Firth, playing on one screen each in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, while Seville Pictures is bowing the copro Irina Palm, from German director Sam Garbarski, exclusively in Toronto.

Among U.S. releases is the action fantasy The Incredible Hulk, from Universal, while Fox is opening M. Night Shyamalan’s sci-fi drama The Happening.