Channing Tatum realizes now is not the time for a film about sexual abuse from The Weinstein Company
Harvey Weinstein may be out, but The Weinstein Company is still feeling the consequences of his crimes.
As of today, Channing Tatum has become the latest talent to cut ties, announcing that he and partner Reid Carolin will no longer develop Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock at the studio.
Tatum made the announcement on Instagram. "[We] will no longer develop it or anything else that is property of TWC," he wrote, imploring his colleagues to help "eliminate abuse from our creative culture once and for all."
Tatum and Carolin had been set to produce and co-direct the YA drama for The Weinstein Company back in 2014. The project sounded promising enough on paper – it was to be based on the well-reviewed young adult novel by Matthew Quick, who also wrote Silver Linings Playbook.
But the Weinstein saga has made the situation extra awkward. The book deals with a teenage victim of sexual abuse, who plans to kill his best friend and then himself. In other words, it's exactly the last thing you'd want to see from a studio mired in its own real-life rape scandal.
The fallout from the New York Times and New Yorker exposés has been swift and dramatic, and it's still not over. Weinstein's gone from kingmaker to pariah as artists have scrambled to distance themselves from him and his associates.
Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes have publicly pleaded with The Weinstein Company to let go of their musical, In the Heights, while Amazon (which is reeling from its own sexual harassment scandal) has dropped a David O. Russell project that was to be produced by The Weinstein Company.
If the studio had hoped that Weinstein's exit would stanch the outflow of talent, Tatum and Carolin's announcement suggests they were sorely mistaken. The question now is how much worse things can get for the company – or whether there'll be a company left at all by the time this is all over.
