Chloë Grace Moretz says her new film is backing away from its writer. It was announced back in January that Moretz would star in the WWII horror movie Shadow in the Cloud, written by Max Landis, who has been accused of sexual misconduct.
“We’ve completely distanced ourselves from him,” Moretz told The Guardian. “We’ve rewritten it several times now. His name is kind of far away from the project.”
According to The Daily Beast, Landis was accused of sexual assault by multiple women on Twitter back in 2017. When Netflix promoted the premiere of his movie Bright on Twitter, Anna Akana, an actress who appeared in Landis’s YouTube video “Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling,” responded, “Written by a psychopath who sexually abused and assaults women, right? Cool.”
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The tweet has since been deleted, but Akana wasn’t the only one to speak out. Video game developer Zoë Quinn, who goes by UnBrunt Witch on Twitter, created her own thread about Landis.
“I’ve been holding in this shit for years as more friends have accrued ‘max landis stories’ bc it wasn’t my place and him & his dad are powerful figures so naturally going against that is terrifying for survivors so I’m SO glad people are finding out what a piece of shit he is,” she wrote.
I’ve been holding in this shit for years as more friends have accrued “max landis stories” bc it wasn’t my place and him & his dad are powerful figures so naturally going against that is terrifying for survivors so I’m SO glad people are finding out what a piece of shit he is.
— them fatale (@UnburntWitch) December 23, 2017
This isn’t the first project of Moretz’s that has been clouded by assault allegations. She starred in Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy, which was never released after five women accused him of sexual misconduct. Moretz, however, valued these women’s stories more than her own work.
“I don’t think it’s time for them to have a voice right now...Of course, it’s devastating to put time into a project and have it disappear,” she told The New York Times. “But at the same time, this movement is so powerful and so progressive that I’m just happy to be in communication with everyone and to see the big change in the face of the industry, which I think is very, very real.”
This time around she is making sure Landis is held accountable.
“Communication is key and being held accountable is key,” Moretz told The Guardian. “It’s a really horrific thing to hear those stories.”