Back on November 20th Patently Apple posted a report titled "At the last moment, Apple Surprisingly Cancelled the AFI Festival Premiere of ‘The Banker’ over Undisclosed ‘Concerns.’" On November 23rd we posted a follow-up report wherein Apple explained why the premier of the film was cancelled. On December 2nd the Filmmakers and stars of the show released a statement defending the film. So what's the status today? Well it appears that the film is ready to launch.

Deadline is reporting today that 'The Banker' is set now set for a 2-week theatrical run before launching on Apple TV+. Apple has stated that the film is targeted with a March 6 theatrical release before it is placed on the Apple TV+ streaming service March 20.

Apple told Variety: "We wanted to take the time to understand the situation at hand — and after reviewing the information available to us, including documentation of the filmmakers’ research, we’ve decided to make this important and enlightening film available to viewers. ‘The Banker,’ starring Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, Nia Long and Nicholas Hoult will be released theatrically on March 6, 2020 and available on Apple TV Plus on March 20, 2020."

While we still have questions, Deadline seemed aggitated over Apple's surprise announcement. Their report stated:

Apple’s PR has steadfastly been ducking our calls on this situation, which cropped up after allegations were made of sexual assault by Cynthia Garrett, who said her brother Bernard Garrett Jr molested both she and her sister when they were children.

I’d heard that just as Apple was not forthcoming to the point of being evasive to Deadline in the past week, the corporation took the same track with the filmmakers, only gesturing that it had finished its own investigation and, as the filmmakers had laid out in detail to Deadline last year, there was no evidence of wrongdoing or that they knew anything about Garrett Jr’s alleged misdeeds, which he has steadfastly denied.

Apple was in a no-win situation on the movie, and clearly the corporation feared tarnishing its global brand. But this goes down as an inauspicious debut for the launch of a feature film division that acquired The Banker in competitive bidding.

It seems Apple reacted more from fear than anything else, and did not stand by its filmmakers. The facts behind the unfortunate controversy were fairly clear since Apple made the surprising decision to pull the movie, and it is also unclear how shunting it to a brief theatrical window in March will help anything.

The alleged victim and her sister will continue to be upset, though an attempt to reach her before this announcement was so far unavailing. More to come on this one.

Does Deadline think that Apple settled the matter with Cynthia Garrett and lawyer who first contacted Apple about the accusations?  Garrett's silence on the matter is interesting and Deadline states that more on this story is coming. So there could be more to this story to unfold.

Who knows, perhaps a little controversy is likely to draw more eyeballs to this film in the long run.

Archive:Apple TV News