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YouTube Red is dropping Morgan Spurlock‘s Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! following the filmmaker’s admission to sexual misconduct.
“We feel for all of the women impacted by the recent statements made by Morgan Spurlock,” a YouTube spokeswoman said Friday in a statement. “In light of this situation, we have decided not to distribute Super Size Me 2 on YouTube Red.”
YouTube picked up Super Size Me 2 for $3.5 million out of the Toronto International Film Festival. While no release plans were officially announced, the Google-owned streamer was planning to release it on its subscription streaming service, Red, in 2018.
Shortly after YouTube’s announcement, Warrior Poets, the production company behind the Super Size Me sequel, announced that it would be pulling the film from the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, where it was set to premiere in the Spotlight section.
“Due to Morgan Spurlock stepping down from Warrior Poets, we the partners have decided that this is not the appropriate time for Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival,” Warrior Poets co-founder Jeremy Chilnick and partner Matthew Galkin said in a joint statement. “Therefore, we will be removing the documentary from the festival’s slate.”
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On Wednesday night, in a lengthy Twitter post, the Oscar-nominated documentarian detailed a sexual encounter in college that ended with his female partner claiming rape, as well as sexual harassment charge by a former employee. He wrote: “I’ve come to understand after months of these revelations, that I am not some innocent bystander, I am also a part of the problem.”
In the 48 hours following Morgan Spurlock’s lengthy mea culpa, the director has faced a quick and heavy backlash. On Thursday, it was announced that he would be stepping down from his production company, Warrior Poets. And on Friday, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Spurlock had been cut from Stephanie Soechtig’s doc The Devil We Know, which is also set to debut next month at the Sundance Film Festival.
This the latest feature release to be curtailed by a talent’s sexual misconduct. Earlier this month, The Orchard pulled the release of Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy one week before it was set to open in a limited release following a New York Times report about the actor-comedian’s lengthy past of sexual harassment. Like C.K., Spurlock is not only the director of his film but also its face. Orchard, which paid $5 million for I Love You, Daddy after its TIFF debut, eventually sold the film back to C.K.
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