WHY YOU CAN’T SEE SAMUEL L. JACKSON’S MOVIE
The streaming revolution took a sharp detour recently when Apple announced its decision to pull from theatrical release its debut movie, “The Banker,” starring Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony Mackie. “The Banker” was also being touted as one of the early enticements on Apple TV Plus, which went live Nov. 1.
But now, “The Banker,” which was supposed to debut Dec. 6, has left Apple TV Plus with a problem at its core.
Apple’s entry in the streaming frenzy had gotten off to a shaky start anyway, when “The Morning Show” — which the New York Times describes as its “star-studded, big-budget flagship series” — drew (at best) a collective yawn from the nation’s critics. (Although, to be fair, “The Morning Show” did garner more than one Golden Globe nomination on Monday, one for best television series, drama.)
And then came “The Banker,” for which Apple has already spent $20 million, adding up to a bit of an overdraft.
“The Banker” is based on the real-life story of two black entrepreneurs — one of whom who was born in southeast Texas — who, according to the Times, “triumphed over the racist business practices of mid-20th-century America.”
Apple had announced a theatrical release and began hyping the film for all the big awards, which screeched to a halt when the daughter of one of the film’s protagonists raised allegations of sexual abuse involving her family.
Setback No. 1 came Nov. 20, when Apple pulled “The Banker” from the prestigious closing-night slot at the American Film Institute’s
annual festival in Los Angeles. The company lobbied for patience, saying the filmmakers needed time to investigate allegations made by Cynthia Garrett, whose father was the basis for the Texasborn Bernard Garrett, the character played by Mackie.
Two days later, Apple scrapped the December release. Since then,
the company has declined to comment on whether it will put “The Banker” in theaters or make it available on Apple TV Plus. Under the original plan, the movie was scheduled for a January debut on the platform.
Cynthia Garrett, a television personality who runs a ministry in Los Angeles, has accused her half-brother, Bernard Garrett Jr., a son of the man played by Mackie and one of the film’s co-producers, of sexually abusing her and her younger sister when they were children in the 1970s. Apple removed his name from publicity materials, and he no longer appears as a producer of “The Banker” on the website IMDb.com, which lists film credits.
“The Banker” details how the elder Garrett overcame racism and a sea of obstacles that made it next to impossible for blacks to build wealth in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era. Jim Crow did not begin to vanish until the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Before that, blacks were still confined to sitting in special balconies in movie theaters and having to enter restaurants through the back door, if they were allowed entrance at all.
Garrett became a millionaire after moving to the West Coast, where he teamed with a fellow black business owner named Joe Morris to buy banks in Texas. Their sole purpose, according to the website Deadline, was to make it easier for African Americans to acquire loans that would allow them to open businesses and buy homes. And the details of how they did it and what happened along the way is the story behind “The Banker.”