Roman Polanski announced his first movie in the #MeToo era and people are enraged

The #MeToo movement has made an indelible mark on popular culture.

After hundreds of women in the entertainment industry shared stories of sexual harassment and abuse, Hollywood is still working out how the movement will be reflected on screen.

But in a move that absolutely no one could have predicted or wants, Roman Polanski has announced his first film since the movement began.

Polanski is currently evading sentencing in America after pleading guilty to sexual intercourse with a 13 year-old girl in 1977. Despite this, Polanski has maintained a successful directorial career, even winning an Oscar for The Pianist in 2003.

Following the #MeToo movement and backlash directed towards disgraced film boss Harvey Weinstein, Polanski was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Weinstein was also expelled in 2017.

Polanski’s latest film, unbelievably titled J’Accuse, will follow the real-life story of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish soldier wrongly accused of spying for the Germans in the 1890s. Dreyfus was eventually exonerated.

Inevitably, a sex offender releasing a film about someone who was found guilty then proved innocent has provoked a huge reaction online.

In 2018 Polanski even described the #MeToo movement as another instance of “mass hysteria” comparing it to McCarthyism in the US.

H/T: Vanity Fair

More: Bill Cosby is about to become the first Hollywood star sentenced in the #MeToo era