jan 20, 2022 - THE GUARDIAN What happens when your star is cancelled but you can’t cancel the film?

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FROM THE GUARDIAN

What happens when your star is cancelled but you can’t cancel the film?

by Ryan Gilbey

Scandals affecting Armie Hammer, Kevin Spacey and Johnny Depp have all hit their movies. We look at how film companies cope when leading players’ box-office stock crashes

[Edited to relevant paragraphs only - full article available via the links below]

It can even be necessary to quietly sideline actors involved tangentially in another star’s scandal, at least until the air clears. Some press interviews with Paul Bettany to promote the Amazon Studios drama Uncle Frank in late 2020 were withdrawn at the last moment to avoid questions about the dubious texts between the actor and his friend Johnny Depp, which had been made public during Depp’s unsuccessful attempt to sue the Sun newspaper for calling him a “wife beater”.

Depp may have been replaced by Mads Mikkelsen in the third Fantastic Beasts movie and had his recent film Minamata offloaded by MGM on to another distributor, but acclaim for the Marvel series WandaVision seems to have successfully laundered Bettany’s reputation. He was even doing the publicity rounds again recently, accepting GQ’s Boss Leading Man award and complaining to one newspaper that it was “an unpleasant feeling” to have his private correspondence read aloud in court. Maybe next time he might not join in with the banter of a chum who is fantasising about killing his ex-wife. Just a thought.

[Edited to relevant paragraphs only - full article available via the links below]

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