After Gina Carano, Disney Will Now Instant Fire Anyone Who Speaks Out
Gina Carano and her controversial posts apparently have moved Disney into creating a zero-tolerance policy around social media
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Gina Carano might have “helped” Disney figure out a new policy for their talent going forward. That being said, new marching orders and rules from Disney might have interesting side effects for the actresses and actors for the considerable future. According to insider Daniel Richtman, it appears that the studio, in the wake of the controversy surrounding Carano, has decided to institute a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to posting on controversial topics. If it happens, the talent will be fired immediately.
If this new policy sounds extreme, it very well might be. There aren’t clear details on what the new specific rules are or how they will be enforced. There’s some chance the studio has outlined a clear social media rules set of guidelines that ensure talent don’t run afoul of the internet mob. Though that sure does feel difficult to enforce. But considering the amount of consternation drummed up from everything that went down with Gina Carano, it at least makes some sense that Disney would want to avoid any dustups moving forward.
This all stems from the last few months of controversy surrounding Gina Carano. During that time, her employment on The Mandalorian and within in the larger Star Wars universe on Disney+ was constantly in question. In the late fall, around the time of the election, Carano tweeted some remarks concerning election integrity as well as the mask-wearing culture in the pandemic that didn’t jive all that well with a substantial cross-section of Star Wars fans. Almost immediately there was a cancel-culture call for her ouster from her Cara Dune character on The Mandalorian.
Those initial remarks didn’t lead to job loss, but over the next few months, Gina Carano did refuse to issue any apologies or take back the posts. Instead, she went the other way, leaning into them and admitting that she liked to stir the pot, so-to-speak. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that the situation really came to a head. That was when Carano posted a comparison between the treatment of people during the Holocaust to how Republicans were treated in the current political system. For Disney, this was where they seemed to draw the line and she was promptly fired.
Gina Carano did quickly land with another production company. She signed a contract with the conservative outlet The Daily Wire, as part of their new push to bring along movies and other on-screen programming to their subscriber base. But Disney wanted no part of it and apparently wants no controversy moving forward. If this new policy is stringent, I suspect we see a significant clamping on what actors and actresses post online. The risk might be too much to consider getting fired over if something is received poorly.
I’m sure we will hear more details about the policy from Disney and how the Gina Carano saga informed their decisions about public-facing messaging coming from their employees. There’s likely great incentive to avoid this ever happening again. That being said, the internet is a fickle place, and cancel culture is running rampant. There’s a chance the goalposts on this are always moving, making it harder to control what people find “acceptable” when it comes to posting opinions.