Disney Bans ABC Affiliates From Talking To Johnny Depp About His New Movie

This is too weird though, sadly, completely believable: Disney Bans ABC Affiliates From Talking To Johnny Depp About His New Movie

Sheesh.  Pathetic and dumb.

G.

This is even more disturbing than that remark about the original music - and I thought that was the most disturbing thing I could've read today. 

Disney can't own or control Depp, so it makes sure its many other "companies" don't promote anything about him unless it's in Disney's self-interest.  Even though ABC originally aired DS, look for ABC-Disney to do the same thing next spring.  It's not a Disney movie, it's a Warner Bros movie, so why should Disney allow promotion of it?  (Maybe it's a stretch for me to speculate on that...but we'll know for sure in the Spring.)

This does sound pretty unbelievable, but somehow I'm a little skeptical that this is really true.  The story was picked up by the Hollywood Reporter, which is usually very reliable, but that and all the other reports seem to stem back to a local Austin affiliate who claimed this in a televised news story about the Austin Film Festival last weekend.  At the time, I just dismissed it and joked to my fellow Deppsters that perhaps the reporters hadn't gotten their credentials properly in order and then wanted something to blame for not being able to get access to an interview.  However, several days have gone by and there hasn't been any attempt to deny that Disney really *was* banning ABC from talking to him.  I would've thought that if it wasn't true, they would've tried to correct the story.  So, who knows??  This is the first time I've ever heard of something like this happening.  We don't know why- could it have to do with the alcohol consumption in The Rum Diary??  And it's hard to believe that Johnny would stand for this.  But on the other hand, Disney is one heck of a powerful entity.  Bah.