Hollywood is experiencing a new wave of post-Weinstein films about sexual harassment, but will they change anything?

The Hollywood studios that turned a blind eye to predatory behaviour are now busily commissioning TV dramas and movies like ‘Bombshell’ and ‘The Assistant’, highlighting behaviour once hidden behind boardroom and hotel room doors, says Geoffrey Macnab

Nicole Kidman as the Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who files a lawsuit against Roger Ailes for sexual harassment in ‘Bombshell’ (Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Lionsgate)

If Chilean miners are stuck down a mine shaft, OJ Simpson is on trial for murder, or a New Republic or New York Times journalist is caught fabricating quotes, someone in Hollywood will make a film about it. Whenever any news breaks that captures the public imagination, the immediate reaction is: commission a movie. That opportunism has always characterised the US film industry. It has been intriguing, though, to see how the studios have reacted to scandals in their own backyard.

Since the sexual harassment allegations involving a series of major male figures in the US media have broken over the past two years, Hollywood has rushed with typical speed to make films and TV dramas exposing the behaviour of all those lecherous white male media magnates.

One new film being talked up currently as a potential awards contender is Jay Roach’s Bombshell, about the women at the Fox News Channel working under Roger Ailes. Produced by Charlize Theron who also stars in it alongside Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie, this is billed as “a revealing look inside the most powerful and controversial media empire of all time; and the explosive story of the women who brought down the infamous man who created it”. John Lithgow plays Ailes while Kidman is cast as Gretchen Carlson, the Fox news anchor who files a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment.