Disney confirms distribution of Gibson film

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Walt Disney Co. will distribute
“Apocalypto,” a Mayan-language film by actor-director Mel
Gibson, as planned on December 8, a Walt Disney Studios
spokeswoman said on Friday.

That confirmation refutes recent media and Internet reports
that family-oriented Disney wanted to sell distribution rights
to the film to another studio to distance itself from the
controversy over anti-Semitic remarks Gibson made when he was
arrested on suspicion of drunken driving last month in Malibu,
California.

“It’s not true,” Disney spokeswoman Heidi Trotta said of
the reports. Disney had no role in producing the film, a
thriller with a cast of unknowns that is set in an ancient
Mayan settlement and told in the Yucatec dialect with
subtitles. Hollywood experts said that until his arrest, it was
expected that Gibson would lead the publicity campaign for the
film.

Gibson has said the story would be told through the eyes of
a Mayan man, his family and village, and would touch on
universal themes about “civilizations and what undermines
them.”

Shortly after Gibson’s arrest, Disney-owned ABC television
network opted not to produce a miniseries about the Holocaust
with his Icon Productions company.

Gibson, 50, has been charged with drunken driving and
having an open container of alcohol in his car in connection
with the traffic stop, during which he told a sheriff’s deputy
that Jews “were responsible for all the wars in the world.”

The rant prompted some Jewish leaders to call on Hollywood
to shun the actor, who holds strong conservative Catholic
religious and political views and whose father is a Holocaust
denier.

Gibson has apologized and entered an alcohol rehabilitation
program.

Gibson’s 1994 film “The Passion of the Christ” provoked an
outcry from the Jewish community, which saw it as an attempt to
inflame anti-Semitic sentiments among Christians.