Ben Shapiro to fund Gina Carano film after her firing for Holocaust comments

With ‘Mandalorian’ star dropped by Lucasfilm, conservative commentator’s Daily Wire to produce her next work; she lauds message of hope in face of ‘totalitarian mob’

By TOI STAFF and AFP         13 February 2021, 

Gina Carano poses at the Disney + launch event promoting ‘The Mandalorian’ at the London West Hollywood hotel in West Hollywood, Calif., Oct. 19. 2019 (Mark Von Holden/Invision/AP)<
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Shortly after she was kicked off hit Star Wars TV series “The Mandalorian” for her controversial social media posts, actress Gina Carano made a deal Friday to produce a film with conservative website The Daily Wire.

The website, run by Jewish conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, agreed to fund the film, which Carano will produce and star in.

There was no word on what the film may focus on.

“The Daily Wire is helping make one of my dreams — to develop and produce my own film — come true,” Carano said in a statement to Deadline.

“I cried out and my prayer was answered. I am sending out a direct message of hope to everyone living in fear of cancellation by the totalitarian mob. I have only just begun using my voice which is now freer than ever before, and I hope it inspires others to do the same. They can’t cancel us if we don’t let them.”

Shapiro said he “could not be more excited to be working with Gina Carano, an incredible talent dumped by Disney and Lucasfilm for offending the authoritarian Hollywood Left.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro addresses the student group Young Americans for Freedom at the University of Utah, September 27, 2017, in Salt Lake City. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, Pool)

“This is what Daily Wire exists to do: provide an alternative not just for consumers, but for creators who refuse to bow to the mob,” he said.

Lucasfilm said Wednesday Carano was no longer a part of “The Mandalorian” cast after many online called for her firing over a social media post that likened the experience of Jews during the Holocaust to the US political climate.

A spokesperson with the production company said in a statement that Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm with “no plans for her to be in the future.”

“Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable,” the statement read.

Carano fell under heavy criticism after she posted that “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…. even by children.”

The actor continued to say, “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

Carano, who played the recurring character Cara Dune on the “Star Wars” series, deleted the post but it was widely shared online and spurred the #FireGinaCarano hashtag to trend. Her character appeared in several episodes of the second season of “The Mandalorian,” a series about a bounty hunter and his quest to unite a powerful, young user of the Force with a Jedi Knight.

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Dune, who in the second season is a lawperson on a frontier planet, frequently teams up with the title character to fight an old nemesis: Remnants of the evil Galactic Empire.

Carano, a former mixed martial artist whose Dune character used a mix of heavy weapons and her fists to best opponents, had been criticized for social media posts that mocked mask-wearing during the pandemic and claimed voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election. She also mocked the declaration of preferred gender pronouns on people’s Twitter profile bio pages, listing “beep/bop/boop” in her social media bio.