HOLLYWOOD – The new Predator movie that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday was not the same flick that existed mere weeks ago.
Hours before the fourth installment in the franchise premiered, Twentieth Century Fox revealed The Predator underwent a last-minute edit to remove a scene featuring 47-year-old former Days of Our Lives and Melrose Place actor Steven Wilder Striegel, who is on the Connecticut sex offender registry.
The single scene portraying Striegel as a jogger who repeatedly hits on Olivia Munn’s biologist character was cut after Munn learned of Striegel’s 2010 felony convictions in Connecticut for risk of injury to a child and enticing a minor by computer, for which he served six months in jail, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Munn alerted the studio on Aug. 15 and Striegel’s scene was removed within 24 hours, Fox said.
Striegel’s case was previously unknown to Fox “due to legal limitations that impede studios from running background checks on actors,” says a studio statement. But it was known to director Shane Black, Striegel’s longtime friend.
After learning more details, “it has sadly become clear to me that I was misled by a friend I really wanted to believe was telling me the truth when he described the circumstances of his conviction,” Black says, per the AP, apologizing to those “I’ve let down by having Steve around them.”
Tweeted Munn, “Those who know about abuse and … continue to put abusers in positions of power are complicit.” Per the Times, Striegel began an online relationship with a 14-year-old he described as a distant relative. The girl, known only as Jane Doe, lived in Newtown at the time. An arrest affidavit noted he kissed the girl, touched her breast over clothing, and engaged in explicit discussions of sex.
Striegel’s listing on the state’s sex offender registry says “The offender, who was 38 years old at the time, engaged in an Internet relationship with a fourteen year old female victim who was known to him. The offender attempted to lure the victim into a sexual relationship by making sexually graphic suggestions to the victim. No weapons, intoxicating substances, force or vehicles were used in the commission of these crimes.”
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