Ian Woolf, a producer on 50 Cent’s show BMF, is under investigation for threatening writers with his SUV on Thursday (June 8).
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate suspended Woolf for allegedly trying to intimidate writers who were picketing in Atlanta. 50 Cent’s BMF is currently in production in Atlanta amid the WGA writers’ strike, which began in May.
“We take acts of intimidation and threats of violence seriously and investigate them thoroughly,” Lionsgate said. “As we continue to investigate, we have sent home the individual involved.”
Writer Brian Egeston detailed Woolf’s actions in a Twitter thread. Egeston claimed Woolf admitted to trying to scare writers by threatening to hit them with a vehicle.
“Dear Mr. Ian Woolf, Welcome to Atlanta … What you did today on Hank Aaron Drive and blocks from the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr….was hateful,” Egeston wrote. “When you pointed your SUV at me as though it were a weapon and slammed the breaks within six feet of writers, I felt the hate and aggression of scenarios similar to Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and others who have been harmed at the hands of hate-filled oppressors.”
He added, “As I marched with the WGA in a peaceful protest, similar to the giants who have walked the very streets where you almost committed manslaughter, you chose to—in your own words— ‘Tried to scare you.’ Mr. Woolf, this scare and intimidation tactic reeks of German Shepards, water hoses, bricks and burning flesh. It reeks of the worst kind of hate … I would implore you, in hindsight, to consider the ramifications of killing an African-American man in the streets of the city too busy to hate, while being the producer of an African-American TV show, created by an African American man, run by an African-American Man.”
Fellow writers Gabriel Alejandro Garza and Tom Smuts corroborated Egeston’s story. 50 Cent hasn’t publicly commented on the allegations against his BMF co-producer.