Lowly box office figures aside, The Predator has been occupying headlines of late for one very specific reason – Shane Black’s contentious decision to cast a registered sex offender opposite Olivia Munn.
The former MCU director has since accepted full responsibility for what he considers to be a “stupid decision,” though the fact that Munn brushed his apology to the side really tells you everything you need to know about the crumbling (working) relationship between director and star.
Nevertheless, while appearing on The Ellen Show just prior to The Predator‘s arrival, Olivia Munn spoke candidly about the entire ordeal, including how she was “chastised” by 20th Century Fox for dragging this horrible situation into the light of day, where it was exposed for all to see.
First of all, when I did call my co-stars I got chastised the next day by people at the studio for telling them and why am I not just keeping it quiet. ‘It’s all going to be okay, it got deleted, what’s the big deal’ and well, it happened.
Munn is referring to the fact that Fox deleted said scene just before it was brought into the public eye, and while she’s since gained the backing of Sterling K. Brown, the actress still felt incredibly isolated from her cast and crew.
I did reach out to my co-stars individually and said ‘hey, I want you guys to know I found this out’ and I found it out through an acquaintance who wanted to know if I knew and I didn’t know them well enough to know if they would say something or not but I figured in that moment they weren’t calling just to kind of give me the heads up. It was going to be something that would get out there so I wanted to give my co-stars the head’s up so they wouldn’t be blindsided like I was and then when it did come out.
Undeterred by the lack of support, Olivia Munn pressed on, and brought the situation to Fox’s attention – for which she deserves all the adulation.
She concluded:
When we do movies we have this reach, it goes everywhere. There’s people all over the world that see what we do and just that tiny drop of fame can be used to hurt an impressionable person and that’s just not okay. And when I spoke out and gave a statement to the LA Times, and they had asked the rest of my cast and I’m the only one who did give a statement, I had no idea how bad the details of the case were and what happened to that girl until it came out in the LA Times on Thursday. The reality is that the people who collude to keep people like this in positions of power, that’s the real problem, people who keep turning blind eyes.
The Predator, meanwhile, is currently playing in theaters across the globe, and if it’s more coverage you’re after, look no further than our official review. Spoilers: it’s not very flattering.