Last week, we posted about reports suggesting that Disney was shopping around the distribution rights to Mel Gibson’s new flick Apocalypto, which is set to come out on December 8th this year.
This came out on the heels of other news where ABC (A disney company) had scrapped plans to do a mini-serise with Gibson.
But now, according to Reuters, Disney is claiming that they have no intention of selling off the distribution rights to Apocalypto and fully intend to release the film themselves:
That confirmation refutes recent media and Internet reports that family-oriented Disney wanted to sell distribution rights to the film to another studio to distance itself from the controversy over anti-Semitic remarks Gibson made when he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving last month in Malibu, California. “It’s not true,” Disney spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said of the reports.
So what we’re looking at here is one of 2 possibilities:
1) When ABC decided to scrap plans to do the Gibson mini-serise, people started speculating Disney would drop Apocalypto… and that speculation caught on and became “news”. Or….
2) Someone higher up in the authority chain at Disney overruled to decision to dump the Gibson film (remembering what happened to them the last time they did that). Considering the delay in refuting the earlier reports… I’m guessing this is what happened.
But whatever the reason, Disney made the right decision here from both a moral and business point of view here (in my opinion, I’m sure some of you disagree). Controversy is not going to hurt this film in the least… and you don’t just kill a career because of a drunken slur.
I wonder just how many of us would still have careers if every offensive and insensitive things we’ve said became public news. Just a thought.
But I still love that crazy psycho ass picture of Mel. Not exactly who I’d get to baby sit my kids. :P
