UNITED STATES
Yahoo Movies
September 6, 2018
By Suzy Byrne
When The Predator opens on Sept. 14, it will be a tad shorter than planned, due to the last-minute deletion of a scene featuring an actor who’s a registered sex offender.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the film’s director, Shane Black, cast his longtime friend Steve Wilder (real name: Steven Wilder Striegel), in a bit role working opposite one of its stars, Olivia Munn, in the sci-fi reboot. However, Munn — a fixture in the Me Too movement — learned in August, long after the film wrapped, that Wilder is a registered sex offender who pleaded guilty in 2010 to two felonies: risk of injury to a child and enticing a minor by computer. Wilder was 38 at the time when he engaged in an online relationship with a 14-year-old female victim, and he served six months in jail.
Munn, who came forward last year to accuse disgraced director Brett Ratner of sexual misconduct, told 20th Century Fox execs about Wilder’s history, and the studio brass decided to delete him from the movie at the last minute. She told the Times she found it “both surprising and unsettling that Shane Black, our director, did not share this information to the cast, crew, or Fox Studios prior to, during, or after production.” However she said she was “relieved” that when Fox was alerted, they “took appropriate action by deleting the scene.”
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