Johnny Depp’s staunchest supporters must have very little free time on their hands, because trying to back the actor across all the various campaigns and petitions has got to be awfully time-consuming and incredibly exhausting. As well as calling for folks to boycott both Fantastic Beasts 3 and Aquaman 2, they’re still attempting to have the actor reinstalled as Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Jack Sparrow while simultaneously trying to get Amber Heard fired from her role in the DCEU’s comic book sequel.
If that wasn’t enough, social media is also actively threatening to avoid anything even remotely associated with Warner Bros., and all that’s without mentioning the recent backlash caused by a harmless throwaway joke in the Animaniacs revival. A sight gag written two years ago based on a briefly popular meme brought the fury of the Johnny Depp fanbase down on the animated series this week, despite the voice cast themselves admitting that they didn’t quite understand what all the fuss was about.
As is the case when anything upsets anyone on the internet these days, a petition was almost immediately launched demanding that the team behind Animaniacs remove the joke in question and publicly apologize to the 57 year-old star. Proving this might be a step too far, though, the movement has failed to even crack 500 signatures.
To put that into perspective, almost 350,000 people have lent their support to having Depp rehired as Jack Sparrow, close to 190,000 called for Warner Bros. to reverse their decision and keep him on as Grindelwald and over 1.5 million have backed the calls to have Amber Heard kicked out of Aquaman 2. Five days after going live, the Animaniacs petition sitting at less than 500 isn’t a great look by comparison.
