Why Is Paramount Hiring So Many Men With Troubled Pasts?

David Ellison and Paramount Pictures have a message for Hollywood’s canceled #MeToo men: We’re hiring.

Barely six months after merging with Skydance, Paramount counts in its ranks screenwriter Max Landis, actor Johnny Depp, animation chief John Lasseter, director Brett Ratner and former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, who has served as president since the Skydance takeover. All five men faced accusations of sexual misconduct before they were hired, some more serious than others, with Lasseter and Shell losing senior positions at Hollywood studios over their allegations.

After being accused of physical assault, Depp fought ex-wife Amber Heard in a defamation case and won. Ratner faced serious allegations of sexual assault, harassment and misconduct, with at least six women — including actresses Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge — publicly accusing him in 2017, but criminal charges were never filed. In a 2019 Daily Beast article, Landis was accused by multiple women of sexual assault, physical violence, emotional abuse and on-set harassment although as with Ratner, charges were not filed.

The career rehabilitation of these men at Paramount Skydance comes nearly a decade after the #MeToo movement exposed abusive conduct throughout entertainment and media, ending the careers of dozens of men, from star NBC anchor Matt Lauer to the once-untouchable CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves. Harvey Weinstein himself remains in jail, convicted of rape.

While Hollywood’s reckoning with sexual misconduct pushed many men out of the industry forever, Paramount has opened the door to taking some of them back, as with the hiring of Ratner to direct “Rush Hour 4,” and Landis’s hiring to write Paramount’s “G.I. Joe.” Depp will lead “A Christmas Carol,” his first major studio project since his defamation trial.

Shell only briefly acknowledged an “inappropriate relationship” with an employee when exiting NBCUniversal, saying he was “truly sorry,” but when his Skydance hiring was met with backlash, he stayed silent. Lasseter, too, has kept a low profile since joining the studio.

Paramount declined to comment for this story.

This spate of hirings is a trend that appears to be in line with the anti-DEI retrenchment of this era, led by President Trump, who has made a priority of rolling back diversity initiatives.

For women in the industry, it’s a problem.

“When companies rehire or promote men accused of sexual harassment, they send a blunt message to every woman in the room: your safety is negotiable, and your voice won’t change the outcome,” Kirsten Schaffer, CEO of Women in Film, told TheWrap when asked about Paramount. “In an industry built on power, that choice doesn’t just erode trust — it reinforces the very silence we’ve fought to break.”

Samantha Sheppard, an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies and chair in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University, said this fits not only into the Ellisons’ handling of Paramount-Skydance, but also the broader narrative of Hollywood history.

“This is meant to signal a number of things,” she said. “The boys are back in charge. That’s really what this is: The boys club has returned, and they can do this because they’ve essentially bought up all the competition.”

“The boys are back in charge. That’s really what this is: The boys club has returned, and they can do this because they’ve essentially bought up all the competition.” – Samantha Sheppard, associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Cornell University

The rehabbing of #MeToo figures, especially those who were not criminally convicted of wrongdoing, is not unique to Paramount, but mainstream Hollywood organizations have lately been averse to re-hiring these men, who often find work on the fringes or at smaller establishments.

Industry observers say Paramount isn’t making a statement about second chances, but is instead more practically hiring individuals who are now less expensive. Before his 2019 downfall over allegations of sexual and emotional abuse, “Chronicle” screenwriter Landis had a quote of $2 million per project. Now, seven years after the misconduct allegations surfaced, Landis is writing Paramount’s “G.I. Joe” treatment. A rep for Landis did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

“They’re taking advantage of the marketplace and getting high level talent for cheap,” a top talent agent told TheWrap.

A top dealmaker agreed: “I don’t see it as a cultural statement. Studios like Paramount Pictures are ultimately in the asset business. Hiring someone like Max Landis or Brett Ratner is more likely about acquiring distressed creative assets at a price below their historical market value.”

***

That makes sense when considering Paramount is about to take on mountains of debt in its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, and is still in the middle of cutting costs from its merger with Skydance last year. Acquiring talent on the cheap would help in its long-term goal of producing an impressive 30 films a year between its own studio and Warner Bros. 

But there’s a different cost to hiring what some would consider to be “damaged goods.” Paramount is vying with other studios to hire filmmakers like Christopher Nolan or Greta Gerwig who can reliably turn out a massive hit. Paramount has signed some impressive first-look deals with squeaky clean and bankable filmmakers like Jon M. Chu, James Mangold, Dan Trachtenberg and the Duffer Brothers, and inked a producing deal with Issa Rae, but the more men with histories of misconduct join the studio, the more its reputation comes under fire.

It raises a straightforward question: What does David Ellison want his studio to look like?

The Men at Paramount

John Lasseter, the driving force behind Pixar’s revolutionizing of the animated film industry, took a leave of absence from Disney — where he oversaw both Pixar and Walt Disney Studios Animation — after allegations surfaced in November 2017 that he frequently made a habit of “grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes” of women at the company. He apologized and acknowledged “missteps,” but left Disney when his contract was up at the end 2018.

Ellison’s Skydance wasted no time in scooping Lasseter up, appointing him as the head of the newly formed Skydance Animation in January 2019. At the time Skydance said that it had conducted its own investigation into Lasseter’s behavior at Pixar and had cleared him of wrongdoing. After the announcement was made, there was a fraught town hall meeting where employees of the company expressed their concerns about Lasseter’s appointment.

Since Lasseter’s installation, Skydance Animation has only produced two films, both released through generous output deals with streamers – 2022’s “Luck” was released through Apple TV; and 2024’s “Spellbound,” which was designed to take on Disney’s fairy tale crown but had the misfortune of debuting on Netflix alongside the theatrical release of megahit “Moana 2.”

It’s worth noting that “Luck” had a particularly tumultuous development, originally worked on by filmmaker Alessandro Carloni from a script by DreamWorks Animation veterans Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger. Ultimately, they were all replaced. And Emma Thompson, who had signed on to voice one of the main characters, left the movie in protest after Lasseter was hired. She was eventually replaced by Jane Fonda.

And while the initial Skydance Animation features disappointed, there are more at-bats coming – Lasseter recruited Disney pals Brad Bird, Rich Moore and Don Hall to make films for the new studio.

Thus far no allegations of misconduct have emerged at Paramount.

***

Max Landis, the son of director John Landis, was accused by several women of sexual assault, abuse and on-set harassment in an explosive Daily Beast article from 2019.

A woman told The Daily Beast that Landis repeatedly raped her during their two-year relationship. Further, three of Landis’s ex-girlfriends said Landis had physically and emotionally abused them, including choking them. Another woman further stated Landis touched her in an unwanted sexual manner repeatedly during an overnight trip to Disneyland, while another woman said she witnessed Landis raping her disoriented friend.

Landis was never charged with misconduct and never investigated, with the LAPD not receiving any formal complaints from Landis’ alleged victims, but he acknowledged “some of what’s been said about me is true” in a lengthy 2021 blog post where he admitted to “emotional abuse.”

His career took a major hit. 2017 was the last time he had a project produced by a major studio – this was when “Bright,” his modern day fantasy movie with Will Smith, premiered on Netflix and the second season of his BBC America series “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” (based on the novel series by “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author Douglas Adams) aired.

In 2020 “Shadow in the Cloud,” based on an older Landis screenplay and heavily rewritten by Roseanne Liang debuted. “Shadow in the Cloud” star Chloë Grace Moretz publicly distanced herself from Landis at the time the movie opened, telling The Guardian “we’ve completely distanced ourselves from him. We’ve rewritten it several times now. His name is kind of far away from the project.”

Last year “Deeper,” a project that originated with a Landis screenplay, was briefly resurrected by Tom Cruise and Ana de Armas, but the status of the project (including who is rewriting the script) remains unknown.

After the success of “Chronicle,” Landis was frequently selling screenplays, some going for as much as $2 million. He would also get plum studio writing gigs, like an assignment based on Disney’s Space Mountain theme park attraction and an early version of what would become 2016’s “Ghostbusters: Answer the Call.” But for all his bluster and marketability, few of these projects materialized and those that did disappointed.

Not a single project of Landis’ following “Chronicle” was a critical or commercial hit, with high profile duds like “American Ultra” (which made $30 million worldwide on a $28 million budget) and “Victor Frankenstein” (budget: $40 million, global gross: $34.2 million). Even a sequel to “Chronicle,” dubbed “Martyr,” ostensibly the most sure-fire arrow in his quiver, was rejected by 20th Century Fox.

Landis’ affinity for 1980s properties (at one point he was tapped to remake his father’s “American Werewolf in London”) and knack for easily digestible high-concept conceit would make him an obvious choice to take on a new version of “G.I. Joe.” But the fact that Paramount would hire Landis over countless other screenwriters who are well suited to the material without the baggage of sexual assault allegations, is confounding when taking into account his lack of box office success.

***

Johnny Depp was one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars when Amber Heard filed for divorce and accused the actor of physical abuse. This led to a high-profile legal battle, in which Depp accused Heard of defamation, leading her to file a counterclaim against him.

A jury ruled in 2022 that Heard had defamed Depp, but the highly publicized legal battle full of damaging testimony that portrayed Depp as physically abusive left a stain. The once-iconic actor has only had a single studio project since, “Day Drinker” at Lionsgate, expected to come out this year.

But Depp joined the Paramount fold with the studio producing a new take on Charles Dickens’ “Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol” with the actor taking the namesake role. Ti West directs with a cast that also includes Ian McKellen and Daisy Ridley. Disney is also kicking the tires on a new “Pirates” movie with Depp back as Jack Sparrow so Paramount is not exactly alone in courting the star.

A representative for Depp did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

***

Once a studio-favored filmmaker behind box office hits like the “Rush Hour” films and “X-Men: The Last Stand,” Brett Ratner’s career ground to a halt in 2017 after he was accused of sexual misconduct by six women, including Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge, while trans actor Elliot Page accused him of “homophobic and abusive behavior” on the set of the “X-Men” film that same year.

Ratner denied the allegations, which surfaced years after the incidents allegedly took place, but he stepped back from his producing deal at Warner Bros. and disappeared from public view. No criminal charges were ever filed.

The filmmaker burst back into the limelight as the hand-picked director of Amazon MGM’s “Melania” documentary. And after Trump reportedly expressed his desire to see the “Rush Hour” franchise revived, Ellison greenlit “Rush Hour 4” with Ratner at the helm.

A representative for Ratner did not respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

***

Jeff Shell, meanwhile, was fired from his perch atop NBCUniversal after an internal investigation into sexual harassment. In a memo to NBCUniversal employees back in 2023, Shell apologized for having “an inappropriate relationship with a woman in the company, which I deeply regret.”

Ellison chose him to serve as president of Paramount Skydance once Skydance’s acquisition of the media giant closed, and he’s served in that role ever since, drawing from his decades of executive experience at Universal.

Most recently, Shell was accused of disclosing confidential corporate information in a lawsuit. His lawyer said he intends to “strongly respond” to the allegations, but Shell was absent from Monday’s conference call to discuss Paramount’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Casey Loving contributed reporting to this story.

The post Why Is Paramount Hiring So Many Men With Troubled Pasts? appeared first on TheWrap.