20th Century Fox had to make the strangest announcement by a movie studio in recent memory on Tuesday. No, Leonardo DiCaprio is not raped by a bear in The Revenant.
The conservative news site Drudge Report ran an all-caps headline that read “DICAPRIO RAPED BY BEAR IN FOX MOVIE.”
“The new movie REVENANT features a shocking scene of a wild bear raping Leo DiCaprio,” Matt Drudge wrote. “The explicit moment from Oscar winning director Alejandro Inarritu has caused maximum controversy in early screenings. Some in the audience escaped to the exits when the Wolf of Wall Street met the Grizzly of Yellowstone.”
Drudge then linked to a Showbiz411 reaction to an advance screening of the film, which describes the gruesome attack by a bear DiCaprio faces during the movie. While it is true that he went to extreme measures to prepare for the film, he didn’t let himself be raped by a bear.
Nevertheless, Drudge wrote “He is raped -- twice!” as if it was a quote. But who said that? And did Drudge ever see the movie himself?
He must not have because Fox, which is distributing the New Regency production, told Entertainment Weekly that there is no scene of DiCaprio being raped by a bear.
“As anyone who has seen the movie can attest, the bear in the film is a female who attacks Hugh Glass because she feels he might be threatening her cubs,” the studio said. “There is clearly no rape scene with a bear.”
The Revenant is director Alejandro G. Inarritu’s follow-up to last year’s Birdman and also stars Tom Hardy. The movie hits theaters on Dec. 25 and goes wide on Jan. 8.