I’M NOT REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING A 12-PACK OF DIET COKE ON CITIZEN KANE’S COFFEE TABLE: How product placements may soon be added to classic films.

Product placement is big business for movies and TV series alike, and items can now be added digitally to films and programmes both new and old.

Fans of classic war flicks will know the scene [from The Great Escape] — actor Steve McQueen revs his motorcycle furiously as he is chased by German soldiers.

Hoping to use the bike to jump over a barbed wire border fence, and reach safety in Switzerland, he pauses to gather his thoughts by a barn.

On the side of the building is a big poster advertising a best-selling beer.

You don’t remember the billboard advert? Well it might not have been there the last time you watched The Great Escape, but it could well be the next.

For TV reruns, it’s not all that new a development, as this 2011 Slate video explores:

Regarding Citizen Kane being colorized, Orson Welles was famously quoted as saying, two weeks before he died in 1985, “Don’t let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons.”

His ghost is saying the same thing right now about digitally inserting a 12-pack of Diet Coke into the living room of Xanadu.