After spending a reported $5M for the acquisition of Louis C.K.‘s black and white comedy I Love You, Daddy, the pic’s distributor The Orchard has scrapped plans to release the movie in the wake of yesterday’s New York Times report whereby five women alleged sexual harassment by the Emmy-winning stand-up comedian.
This morning the distributor released the following statement: “The Orchard will not be moving forward with the release of I Love You, Daddy.” Originally the movie, which C.K. wrote, directed, produced and stars in, was set to open on Nov. 17 in limited release. I Love You, Daddy premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, and it was out of there that Orchard snapped up the film.
Related Stories
Last night’s premiere was cancelled due to the news about C.K.; he also stepped back from an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. In addition, the movie’s 20-year old star Chloe Grace Moretz reportedly stepped away two weeks ago from doing publicity when she heard about possible accusations against C.K.
Watch on Deadline
Given the news about C.K., there are elements of I Love You, Daddy that hit too close to home: In the movie, a character pretends to masturbate at length in front of other people, and other characters appear to dismiss rumors of sexual predation. I Love You, Daddy follows a TV writer (C.K.) whose teenage daughter (Moretz) becomes the obsession of a much older filmmaker (John Malkovich).
Currently, it has not been decided what the fate of I Love You, Daddy is. The current climate surrounding C.K. makes it impossible for The Orchard to release and it’s too soon to determine whether this movie goes straight to the home market, or gets unloaded by the distributor.
Yesterday, HBO announced it was removing C.K.’s projects from its on-demand service, and that the comedian would not appear in its Nov. 18 autism special Night of Too Many Stars. FX which has been C.K.’s home for the last eight years with his Emmy-winning Louis and other TV productions like Baskets and Better Things which he serves as an EP on issued a statement yesterday that they were “troubled” by the allegations made against C.K. and are reviewing them.
Reportedly, C.K. would have been fine self-distributing the movie like he did with his dramedy series Horace and Pete, however, he wanted the pic to get a big screen release. Pete Hammond reports today that The Orchard literally sent out awards screeners for I Love You, Daddy yesterday.
Legally what Louis did sounds like Lewd Conduct unless you consider luring and entrapping the women in his hotel room as Kidnapping. He should just volunteer in prisons for the next five years (washing dishes, mopping floors). Imagine the material he’ll generate!
Based on the allegations, this guy is a sex criminal, and a calculating one. But he will face no charges because Cy Vance.
I hope he doesn’t beat himself (up) over this.
Louis C.K. has done too much “beating on himself” that’s why he is in this jam.
Why are we only hearing about the accused and the victims, and NOT the people that enabled this????? Studio Executives, Managers, Agents, etc….. Why aren’t you investigating that too?
Dave Becky has taken enormous heat on so ial media for this and he will never make another pennynoff of LCK. His future is in definite question though.
Fuck Louis CK — pathetic comedy writer who loves to play with himself in front of scared younger women. The State of New York should take his kids away from him–they would if this was a non famous black man.
Here are some rhetorical questions. But people are not asking them. People are repeatedly lumping all these current disclosures and allegations together as though they are equivalent misconduct. Are they? Do you feel that all sexual perversion should be treated the same? Are there degrees of egregiousness? Is it the same whether or not there was (unwanted) physical contact? Should we react in the same way to allegations of indecent exposure, and allegations of groping and rape?
Lumping Louie in with Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby and Kevin Spacey and the rest, is just wrong. And nobody is asking these questions for fear of being accused of defending or excusing someone’s bad and destructive behavior. Wrong is wrong, but I believe it is also wrong, and in fact, ignorant, (and perhaps politically motivated) to be equally outraged at Louie’s unforgivable bad behavior, and the more serious, more criminal, behavior of the others. Do you agree?
Here’s what I think: Louie is pathetic and sad and needs help. Read his statement in the NY Times today. But he is nowhere near as bad as the others. Weinstein and Cosby and this Alabama politician are criminal predators.
Louie is probably screwed for the rest of his life because his sad and damaging behavior is being lumped in with the behavior of much worse (IMHO) predatory behavior. I hope his statement helps him. I am not defending or excusing Louie in any way, but I hope you see a difference.
It’s not going to be a popular position, but I do agree with you. (I’m a woman, btw.) I have had more than a couple guy friends send me dick pics and insinuate they would like to get physical, and I’d just say – “Hey, no thanks.” And that would be the end. There is a big difference between that kind of overt (and yes, gross) suggestion and full on criminal rape. On a scale of 1 to 100 with 1 being benign flirtation and 100 being criminal rape, I put Cosby and Polanski at 100, Weinstein at an 90 (he didn’t *drug* his victims), Spacey at an 80, Ratner and Piven at like a 70 and Louis CK at about a 45. The one I believe who has hope for redemption is Louis CK. What he did was icky, but he didn’t forcibly rape (and/or drug) someone. And, he took full public responsibility. The others haven’t. He’s got a long road ahead of him, but I do have hope that he works himself out of this.
Louis C.K. is a jerk. What he did was legal, and it’s BS that he had POWER over the women who watched him or listened over the phone. Can you say YES? Can you say NO? Can you hang up a phone? Then you have all the power you need. If one person asks another to watch him play with his/her genitals, and the answer is “yes”, we call that “consensual sex”. Should being famous deprive a person of the right to have any sex that suits them, so long as it’s legal? It takes a lowly person to capitalize on someone else’s sexual weirdness, and the women who came forward with these stories are lowly and vicious without shame. Only social media morons will fail to see that, and the only reason these stories went public is that our media plays to morons. Our media and its vomit-loving devotees are far more disgusting than any jerk showing his dick to someone who says, “Yes, I want to see that.”