In one of those classic press statements that every publicist dreads having to deliver, a representative for Fox has clarified that the upcoming revenge thriller The Revenant doesn’t feature a scene in which Leonardo DiCaprio is raped by a bear. This notification—made to no less a paper of record than Entertainment Weekly—comes after a Drudge Report post earlier today that claimed that the new film from Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu “features a shocking scene of a wild bear raping Leo DiCaprio!” (Exclamation point courtesy of the original source, and a possibly unhealthy fascination with the idea of the Wolf Of Wall Street star being assaulted by a bear.)
We’ve known pretty much since the project—based on a novel by Michael Punke—was first announced that DiCaprio’s character Hugh Glass was going to get mauled by a bear at some point, an event that’s been heavily featured and foreshadowed in the movie’s trailers. But that’s as far as it goes, according to a Fox representative, who would once again like to emphasize, in no uncertain terms, that, “There is clearly no rape scene with a bear.” (Again, this is a sentence a highly paid professional was forced to deliver as part of their career.) Instead, DiCaprio is merely attacked by a mother bear protecting her cubs, with any sexual content purely a product of the fevered, ursine-festooned imaginations of the members of the audience. The Revenant hits theaters on January 8.