After James Gunn was fired from Marvel Studios by Disney when old tweets of him came to light you saw a ton of creatives starting to purge their accounts of older content. One can imagine that the biggest company in Hollywood is likely grateful for this so they don’t have to fire anyone in the future after hiring them as they won’t be digging into social media on their own.
It is easy to imagine that after having to fire Gunn that the House of Mouse would be more careful as to who they let work for their various studios moving forward. However, as to if Disney is now policing the social media accounts of creators before they get hired by the company? Alan Horn has this to say:
“I would say no. I don’t think we do extensive background checks to see what a person has said. I feel sad for some of the people ensnared in all of this. And sometimes I feel like, “Wow, what they said is so outrageous that it must have occurred to them that it would have repercussions.” It’s a very open world now, and this stuff is a matter of record. The admonition is: Be careful.”
While it wouldn’t be hard to imagine Disney having a team put together to meticulously comb through the social media accounts of anyone who is going to work for them moving forward, it also seems like something which would cut off quite a bit of talent if they were proactive on this.
Do you think that if Disney is willing to fire people over old social media content that they should check for it in advance? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
