Three months ago, Apple signed a deal with director Jon Watts to develop a sequel to his crime caper Wolfs, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt. But, according to Variety, Apple has canceled those plans.
Sorry, George, but this is what happens when you get so involved in presidential politics that you lose half the American box office even before you read the script. That’s bad for business. But Apple’s Tim Cook didn’t halt the Wolfs sequel because of that. For the real reason, you need only recall the national outrage Jeff Bezos triggered when he spiked The Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala.
Clooney played a starring role in forcing President Biden to step aside for a younger Democratic nominee. The irony? He did it while promoting Wolfs, probably feeling even more influential than the sitting president. But his candidate lost. Now, fear of Trump’s retribution is such that self-censorship is as toxic in Hollywood as it is in boardrooms, newsrooms, and classrooms.
Rich men like Cook and Bezos are selling out American democracy to support this wannabe dictator. History will judge them harshly. Because these wannabe oligarchs would rather kneel before a Russian-style autocracy than stand for American democracy. That makes them no different from the oligarchs who sold out Russian democracy to back wannabe Czar Vladimir Putin — or the industrialists who sold out German democracy to back Führer Adolf Hitler.
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