March 28, 2024

Roy Price Quits Amazon Studios After Sexual Harassment Claim

Mr. Price, who could not be reached for comment, made no secret of his departure from Amazon. Shortly before 5 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, he updated his Facebook page to say he had left his job.

The move followed the firing and Hollywood-wide denunciation of the mogul Harvey Weinstein, which resulted from the many accusations of sexual harassment and assault against him. (Mr. Weinstein, through his spokeswoman, has denied engaging in nonconsensual sex.)

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Mr. Price became a bit player in the Weinstein story when Rose McGowan, an actress who had reached a settlement with Mr. Weinstein in 1997 after an episode at a film festival, posted a series of tweets directed at Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon. In them, Ms. McGowan said she had told the head of Amazon Studios that Mr. Weinstein had raped her. (Ms. McGowan did not mention Mr. Price by name and did not respond to a message on Twitter asking for clarification.)

Before that series of tweets, Ms. McGowan had directed a Twitter message at Mr. Price concerning Mr. Weinstein, asking, “Remember when I told you not to do a deal with him and why?”

Mr. Price, a Harvard alumnus who once worked at the consulting firm McKinsey Company, had been an executive at Amazon for the last 13 years. He oversaw several TV shows, including “Transparent” and “The Man in the High Castle.”

Amazon’s original programming has not gotten the same buzz as Netflix shows like “Stranger Things” or Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which won an Emmy last month in the best drama category. Amazon was already in the process of trying out a new game plan for its original programming by time Mr. Price was suspended.

On his watch, Amazon distributed the Oscar-winning film “Manchester by the Sea,” and made itself into a force on the film festival circuit. The recent New York Film Festival opened with an Amazon-financed film, Richard Linklater’s “Last Flag Flying”; featured an Amazon coproduction, Todd Haynes’s “Wonderstruck,” as its “centerpiece” attraction; and closed with the Amazon-distributed “Wonder Wheel,” the latest from Woody Allen. The red-carpet portion of the “Wonder Wheel” premiere was canceled on Saturday, two days after Amazon announced Mr. Price’s suspension.

Albert Cheng, the chief operations officer for Amazon Studios and the former head of digital operations at ABC, was assigned to be Mr. Price’s interim replacement.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/business/media/roy-price-amazon-studios.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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