Warner Bros and Bret Ratner cut ties after sexual misconduct claims, while Dustin Hoffman apologises over ‘groping’
Brett Ratner, the film producer who backed a key financing deal with Warner Bros, said he will step back from dealings with studio in light of lurid allegations of sexual harassment.
Six women, including actresses Olivia Munn and Natasha Henstridge, told the Los Angeles Times that Ratner had sexually harassed or assaulted them. Through his stake in RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Ratner had a deal to finance as many as 75 of the Hollywood studio’s biggest titles, including this year’s blockbuster Wonder Woman. RatPac-Dune investors have included investor Len Blavatnik and, until earlier this year, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
“I am choosing to personally step away from all Warner Bros-related activities,” Ratner, who has denied the allegations, said in an emailed statement from the office of his lawyer Martin Singer. “I don’t want to have any possible negative impact to the studio until these personal issues are resolved.”
Writer Anna Graham Hunter alleged in a Wednesday column in The Hollywood Reporter that the now 80-year-old actor groped her on the set of TV movie Death of a Salesman and “talked about sex to me and in front of me.”