Roy Price, Vice President Amazon Studios and global head of Prime Video content, has been suspended from the retail giant and streaming platform following a harassment claim from one of the company’s producers.
“Roy Price is on leave of absence effective immediately,” an Amazon spokesperson said Thursday in a statement, adding, “We are reviewing our options for the projects we have with The Weinstein Co.”
In Price’s absence, chief operating officer Albert Cheng will step in. Cheng joined Amazon in June 2015, coming from Disney/ABC. During his time at the latter, he led the company’s efforts to bring programming to digital platforms.
The move to suspend Price comes mere hours after Isa Hackett, a producer on Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, detailed in an exclusive interview her “shocking and surreal” experience with the programming chief in July 2015.
“You will love my dick,” Price said, according to Hackett, who relayed her account to others. The producer says she reported the incident immediately to Amazon executives. An outside investigator, Public Interest Investigations Inc.’s Christine Farrell, was brought in to speak to Hackett as well as Amazon execs. Hackett says she was never told the outcome of that inquiry, but notes that she hasn’t seen Price at any events involving her shows. (Price, through a spokesperson, declined comment.)
