Woody Allen‘s upcoming film A Rainy Day In New York may never get an official release, with a report in the New York Post suggesting that the film’s distributor Amazon is tossing up whether it will actually make it to the screen.
According to a “film industry insider”, who spoke with the post anonymously, A Rainy Day In New York “will either not come out or [will] get dumped by Amazon without any PR or theatrical release.” Amazon itself has not yet made a comment.
The Post’s source also claimed that Woody Allen, who typically makes one movie a year, is “having trouble casting his new film”, suggesting that the big names who typically work with the director may be wary to do so in the wake of sexual assault allegations against him.
Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan Farrow has accused him of sexually molesting her in 1992, when she was aged seven; a court found “no credible evidence” to support the allegations in 1993, but in the wake of the #MeToo movement, they have returned to the conversation.
A number of the stars of A Rainy Day have announced their plans to donate the salaries they earned from the film – Timothée Chalamet will give his to “charities for victims of assault”, while Selena Gomez and Rebeca Hall are donating theirs to Time’s Up.
Dylan Farrow recently took a crack at Justin Timberlake, who starred in Allen’s 2017 film Wonder Wheel, for publicly supporting the Time’s Up movement, and wearing their pin to the Golden Globes while failing to condemn the director.
Numerous actors who have worked with Allen in the past have expressed “regret” about starring in his projects, with the likes of Ellen Page, Greta Gerwig, David Krumholz, Chloë Sevigny and Mira Sorvino all making public statements in recent weeks and months.
If Amazon was to dump Rainy Day, there would be precedent for the decision. Late last year, Louis CK‘s film I Love You Daddy had its release shelved after a New York Times expose in which several women came forward and accused the comedian of sexual misconduct.
The distributor may actually be looking to cut ties with the director, given that they paid him a rumoured $80 million dollars for heavily-hyped miniserie Crisis In Six Scenes, which starred Miley Cyrus but turned out to be a critical (and presumably commercial) disappointment.
