Gina Carano sues Disney over her firing from The Mandalorian.

 

Gina Carano in 2019. NBC News.

Gina Carano is suing Disney over her firing from The Mandalorian and is being backed by Elon Musk. NBC News. Carano played rebel hero Cara Dune on the show but was fired for social media posts. Carano is seeking a restoration to the show or give her at least $75,000. Carano denied that her posts were controversial and said the firing was politically motivated. She also said that she was held to a different standard to her co-starts who were able to speak freely on social media. Elon Musk will pay for the lawsuit a year after he agreed to pay the legal funds of anyone who was fired because of posts on X. 

Today is an important day for me--I am filing a lawsuit against @lucasfilm & @Disney

After my 20 years of building a career from scratch, and during the regime of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, Lucasfilm made this statement on Twitter, terminating me from The Mandalorian: “Gina…

— Gina Carano 🕯 (@ginacarano) February 6, 2024

My Comment:

Will this lawsuit succeed? I don't know. I do think that Disney did indeed lie about what Gina Carano did and that they were pretty clearly in the wrong when the fired her. But I don't know the employment law well enough to know for sure. My guess is that Disney would be able to fire Carano for whatever they wanted.

But even if Disney wins in this lawsuit, this was a no brainer for Gina Carano. No matter the outcome of the lawsuit it won't cost her a dime and it will get her attention to revive her career. If she wins she gets money and/or gets to be back on The Mandalorian. And if she loses she's not really out of her own money, so why not? 

There is a very good chance that Disney will settle the lawsuit regardless. They are not doing that well as a company as they have had some very big flops at the box office and Disney+ is hemorrhaging money. Fighting this lawsuit could cost them a lot of money even if they win and they could lose even more if they lose. If it was a decade ago when Disney was printing money it might be a different story. But now? I think they settle and try to make this go away. 

I do think that Carano has a point that she was singled out. Pedro Pascal has a long history of terrible social media posts but since he is on the left he got a pass. And the recently deceased Carl Weathers praised Carano on social media and was not punished for it at all. Pascal and Weathers were able to post what they wanted on social media but for some reason Carano was not? 

I don't know if Carano would be allowed to return to The Mandalorian given that the fate of the show itself is pretty up in the air. It's not clear if the show is going to get a 4th season. With the death of Carl Weathers there is an obvious opening for her character to replace his, but again, that would only happen if the show returns.

And I honestly don't know why you would want to return to the show. There was bad blood between both sides even before the lawsuit and I can't imagine Carano would be treated well if she was brought back. My guess is that it would not be a pleasant experience for anyone involved. 

Of course, the real elephant in the room is the fact that Elon Musk made good on his promise to fund lawsuits for people that fired for their posts on X (or back when it was still called Twitter). This should be a deterrence for anyone that wants to fire someone for a couple of mildly controversial social media posts. Even if most or even all of these lawsuits fail, it still costs money to fight them and the HR departments that fire folks for social media posts might end up giving up when they realize it could cost them a lot of money.