Amazon shelved a finished $25m film and settled Woody Allen's $68m lawsuit

Amazon, spending heavily to turn Prime Video into an awards contender, signed Woody Allen in January 2015 for his first television series. In 2016 the relationship expanded into a four-film deal that included a $10m advance. Allen carried a decades-old controversy that had been public the whole time — a risk Amazon's own signing press release framed as a prize.

When the #MeToo reckoning renewed attention on that accusation, the films became hard to promote. Cast members distanced themselves publicly; Timothée Chalamet and Selena Gomez pledged their salaries to charity. In June 2018 Amazon terminated the deal by email without stating a reason, and in August confirmed that the completed A Rainy Day in New York, reported to have cost $25m, had no release date. For the first time since 1981, no new Allen film appeared that year.

Allen sued in February 2019 for $68m, arguing that Amazon was fully aware of the accusation when it signed and had terminated without cause. Amazon's response was that Allen's own comments about #MeToo 'sabotaged' its attempts to promote the films, and that 'scores of actors and actresses expressed profound regret for having worked with Allen in the past'. The case settled in November 2019 on undisclosed terms.

The shelved film finally opened across Europe in late 2019 and reached US cinemas in October 2020 through a small independent distributor. Allen's subsequent films went without a major US release, and his yearly release streak never returned. Amazon had paid the production cost, fought the lawsuit and settled — for films it had chosen not to release.