First of all, put down the torches and pitchforks.
This isn’t a legal discussion or an ethical condemnation of any party involved in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard divorce saga.
We have courts of law and public opinion for that. And odds are anyone who has chosen a side or already made up their mind isn’t going to be swayed by a some guy on the Internet.
This is a justification of Warner Bros. decision. There’s been a lot of Warner bashing following the studio’s decision to cut Depp loose last week. Not to mention calls for a boycott of both Fantastic Beasts 3 and Warner as a whole to punish them for their decision.
But the truth is Warner Bros. made the right call and they’d likely make it again, social media outcry or not.
After meeting on the set of The Rum Diary in 2009, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard became Hollywood’s biggest glamour couple and officially tied the knot in 2015 . The marriage dissolved in flames and violence just a year later, igniting a messy divorce full of accusations of emotional and physical abuse by both.
The divorce revealed the full extent of Depp’s substance abuse problems. He admitted that he was so affected by his various addictions, he failed to remember anything he did during his frequent stupors. Including possibly violent behaviour.
The divorce was made official in 2017 with three big takeaways; Heard was granted a seven million dollar settlement (she donated a large chunk to charity), both of them agreed not to disparage each other or the marriage in the future and both released a statement declaring that neither lied or made anything up during the proceedings.
That last one is a biggie, with both Depp and Heard essentially admitting that the other didn’t lie or fabricate the accusations of abuse. At the end of the day, they both admitted their respective guilt.
Fast forward to last week, when Depp lost his libel case against The Sun newspaper in the U.K. Depp was suing the Sun for a 2018 story that used the term “wife-beater” when referring to him. The court found that the Sun had provided numerous instances of Depp’s alleged abuse and ruled that the use of the term “wife-beater” was warranted.
Or at the very least didn’t constitute libel or a legal smear.
A court of law determined that Depp was guilty of spousal abuse. And when Jane and Joe Q public see this in the headlines for the first time, they are going to see that a newspaper is legally allowed to call Depp a wife-beater. Keep that in mind.
Warner Bros. immediately requested Depp resign not just from from Fantastic Beasts 3, but the entire franchise. For his part, Depp did so without fuss and pledged to continue fighting to clear his name. It was recently revealed that Warner will still pay him his full salary despite leaving.
In the meantime, fans immediately began a petition demanding Warner reinstate Depp, with many signees passionately declaring his innocence and hurling insults at Heard.
Depp also has a libel suit pending against both the Washington Post and Amber Heard for an op-ed she penned in 2018. In it she claimed to be a victim of domestic abuse, though she didn’t mention Depp by name.
So that’s a quick summary of the fiasco. Now let’s add a little more context before discussing why Warner was right to cut the cord.
Warner Bros. doesn’t just need the Fantastic Beast movies to do well; they need them to be blockbusters. Including production and advertising costs, Warner invests over three hundred million American greenbacks into each film. Widely seen as Harry Potter 2.0, the Fantastic Beasts franchise needed to be a studio saviour since the DCEU was misfiring at the time and the box office shine had worn of the animated Lego films. Simply put, nothing had risen up to fill the space left by Harry Potter when his movies came to an end.Â
And Warner was getting knocked to the mat time and again by the competition as a result.
But the problem is the Fantastic Beast movies aren’t doing great. They aren’t failing by any means, but they aren’t raking in the dollars Warner had hoped. Or needs. They have too much invested in the franchise to simply give up and are faced with salvaging the remaining three (planned) films and making them as profitable as they can.
And the films were already facing an uphill battle even before Depp’s recent legal woes deepened. While they dodged a bullet with Ezra Miller (so far), J.K. Rowling’s recent comments on trans rights-and her choice to double down on those sentiments during the growing backlash-angered Harry Potter fans and trans rights activists the world over. And there were already plenty of lifelong Harry Potter fans angry over Depp’s involvement, with many avoiding the films since he was cast.
The entertainment industry is almost as optics centred as modern politics. And while no one likes to hear it (or even say it out loud), movie goers are impossibly finicky, especially in today’s cancel culture (and that’s BOTH sides of the political spectrum). They make die hard sports fans look reasonable by comparison. Warner Bros. is a publicly traded company and while it is marketing Fantastic Beasts as Harry Potter for grown ups, it’s also trying to convince the ticket buying public that these movies are relatively family friendly and good for all ages (which is why the first two films were released during Christmas).
Having Depp on board would make that a near impossible sell. Trying to market a film franchise as fun for the whole family while using an actor with a significant history of substance abuse and is legally (currently at least) defined as a domestic abuser would have been an exercise of enormous and futile hypocrisy.
Remember, following Depp’s loss in a U.K. courtroom, the legal presumption of innocence no longer exists. At least to the casual observer. And casual observers buy a lot of movie tickets.
With everything else going on (a disgruntled Potterverse fanbase, a questionable appetite for the franchise as a whole, etc.), Warner moved quickly to address one of the few things within their control.
And before you argue the legalics of Depp’s situation, remember, he openly stated that Heard did not lie during their divorce proceedings. That includes her accusations of abuse.
(That also means Heard admitted to Depp’s accusations of abuse against her as well, meaning she is just as guilty and should not complain about the consequences to her career. And no one should discount recently revealed audio recordings where she admits hitting Depp).
Disney faced an eerily similar situation a few years ago with popular Guardians of the Galaxy writer/director James Gunn (and they had to deal with that only a few month after addressing a public relations nightmare with Roseanne Barr). In both cases, both studios knew their decisions would provoke swift and vicious backlash on social media, both studios weighed the pros against the cons and both decided that the consequences of doing nothing outweighed the repercussions of decisive (if not popular) action.
Could Warner Bros. be guilty of a double standard between Depp and Ezra Miller? That has some definite merit. What about continuing to use Heard in the DCEU? Despite recent reports that she is shooting new scenes for the Snyder Cut of Justice League, rumours are that DC was actively diminishing her role in Aquaman 2 and could still axe her entirely. Could Depp be back? Again, Look at James Gunn, who helmed DC’s upcoming The Suicide Squad (one of next summer’s most anticipated releases) and is back helming the third instalment of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy.
The Western consuming public has an anemic attention span and when Fantastic Beasts 3 arrives in theatres in two years or so, much of this rage may have been forgotten. And as for the petition demanding Warner bring Depp back? There’s a good chance many of the names on that list belong to people who didn’t see the first two movies and had no interest in the third.
Getting rid of Depp was a messy solution to an impossible problem. But given the nature of the beast, it was the closest to right Warner Bros. could have gotten.
This has nothing to do with the law or Depp’s guilt or innocence. Warner Bros. made a calculated business decision based on the optics of the situation. That’s all.
This isn’t a place to debate the evidence and motives and “what aboutisms.” And there is a good chance Depp wins his appeal of the recent U.K. decision and future legal actions. There is a very good chance his name could be cleared (legally) of domestic abuse.
But the law’s wheels move slowly and it’s unlikely his name could be cleared before the next Fantastic Beasts movie lands. Remember, he is fighting a legal war with fronts in different countries. But for now, Warner had to make a tough decision or risk one of their greatest investments.
Image www.independant.co.uk
