I realize what I’m about to say is entirely Not The Point of all this, but I’ve been wondering with cynical fascination what would happen in the case when accusations hit a star connected to one of the major ongoing blockbuster franchises like Marvel or Star Wars. And maybe this still isn’t it, at the moment it sounds like something from the 80s, and Michael Douglas is just at the fringes of the Marvel Universe with his Ant-Man involvement. Maybe he slides by. But I wonder what it’s like inside those studios with multi-movie franchises and sprawling casts. I picture entire office wings of lawyers, their own investigators, producers, agents, making contingency plans for everything. What do they already know and have decided they can live with, who will they defend to what extent, who’s replaceable and how? Like what if some Kevin-Spacey-level stuff came out right now about Robert Downey Jr., or Adam Driver, or Henry Cavill? And what are they doing differently as they plan out future franchises? What a kind of contingency plans and contract clauses are being included from the start on big stuff like that for the future?
Again, I realize this is a rather cynical tangent to the issues at hand, but I can’t help being curious about what this is changing behind the scenes.