Apple has tongues wagging for all the wrong reasons after it cancelled the international premiere of the Apple-original movie The Banker yesterday.
The movie was scheduled to premiere at the AFI Festival in Hollywood tonight, and would have been the closing film at this event.
It is based on the real-life story of two black businessmen who accumulated massive wealth by pretending that their firm was managed by a white man. The Banker features top international names such as Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson.
The latest development casts doubt over the future of a movie that was intended to become a huge debut for the Cupertino-based company. The Banker was supposed to be the tech giant’s first movie release on Apple TV Plus, its recently announced streaming platform.
After the launch of Apple TV Plus at the beginning of November, insiders speculated that Apple was banking on the movie becoming a huge success with film critics and possibly even being nominated for an Oscar.
The company would, of course, face stiff competition from other streaming platforms in the process. Netflix, for example, received an Oscar nomination for its movie Roma (directed by Alfonso Cuarón) last year.
In the press statement that Apple released yesterday afternoon, the company said that it bought The Banker earlier in 2019 since it found its educational and entertaining story about financial literacy and social change moving.
The statement says that there were some “concerns” last week surrounding the film that were brought to their attention, and that Apple and the filmmakers “need some time to look into these matters and determine the best next steps”.
In the light of this, the statement concludes, Apple has decided to no longer premiere The Banker at the AFI Festival.
Details of the company’s concerns remain sketchy, but according to a Deadline report, Apple made the decision to cancel the movie’s premiere after “potentially damaging” allegations emerged against one of its subjects.