*More details have emerged in the “The Banker” film controversy.
We previously reported… Apple cancelled the film’s world premiere at the American Film Institute’s annual festival Thursday night after unspecified “concerns were raised involving the [film’s] real-life subjects.”
The film stars Anthony Mackie as the late Bernard Garrett Sr. in the true story set in 1963 about Bernard Garrett (Mackie), who recruited a white man (Nicholas Hoult) to front his growing financial business in a pre-Civil Rights Act America. Garrett Jr.
Bernard Garrett Jr. was initially billed as a co-producer of the film but once his half-sisters started spilling the tea to the media about the family’s dark history – his credit has disappeared from publicity materials.
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Via Hollywood Reporter:
Garrett Jr.’s half-sisters, roughly 15 years his junior, have recently made Apple aware of their claim that when he was a young man living in their home, he sexually molested them over the course of a few years. The sisters made the claim in connection with separate allegations that the timeline of the film was tweaked in order to leave the girls and their mother out of the story and instead feature Bernard Garrett Sr.’s first wife, even though he had already divorced her by the time of some of the events depicted in the film.
The girls say the abuse began in the early 1970s without their father’s knowledge, shortly after Garrett Sr. returned home from prison and the family lived in Glendora, California. His son by Eunice Garrett was invited to live in their home.
One of the sisters, Cynthia Garrett (formerly an interviewer on MTV and VH1), says producers of The Banker have contacted her numerous times in recent days, offering to show her the film and discuss her concerns.
Cynthia Garrett says she and her sister, Sheila Garrett, kept their abuse secret for a decade, even from each other, until her parents divorced.
Sheila Garrett says when she finally told her father of the abuse, “He kind of, basically, swept it under the rug. And when I got married, I told my father I did not want Bernard Jr. there, so my father didn’t come to my wedding.”
An attorney for producer Romulus Entertainment tells THR that Garrett Jr. stepped down as a producer to avoid taking attention away from his father’s story.
“The Banker” is set to be released theatrically Dec. 6 and the following month, it will debut on the new Apple TV+ service.
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