JANUARY 9, 2019 12:30PM PT

Time’s Up, Women in Film Slam Skydance for Hiring John Lasseter: It ‘Endorses and Perpetuates a Broken System’

By MATT DONNELLY

Top watchdogs for women’s issues in Hollywood have issued scathing responses to Skydance Media’s naming of John Lasseter to the company’s top animation job. Lasseter’s new job comes months after he was ousted from Pixar in the wake of sexual harassment scandals.

Time’s Up, the activist group founded in response industry gender disparity and the abuse exposed by the accusers of Harvey Weinstein, said Lasseter’s deal “endorses and perpetuates a broken system that allows powerful men to act without consequence.”

Women in Film, a longtime advocacy group, said the disgraced Pixar leader and top Walt Disney Company executive’s “inappropriate touching and kissing has been reported by a number of women – from colleagues to subordinates,” and questioned Skydance CEO David Ellison’s pledge to keep his employees safe by hiring outside investigators and speaking with Lasseter at length about his past.

“For women in this industry to feel safe, we need more transparency than the above statement and we need to know what the company plans to do to ensure that safety. By saying Skydance has conducted an independent investigation and then proceed to hire Lasseter, do they mean to suggest that they are hiring him in spite of the numerous accounts of women and colleagues? We do think that people can learn and change, and we look forward to men who model this, but true reparation requires transparency.,” WIF President Amy Baer and Executive Director Kirsten Schaffer said in a joint statement.

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