Did Keanu Reeves reject a $1.7 billion "woke" movie offer after saying "woke mind virus should be destroyed," as a social media post claimed? No, that's not true: The claim was first published on a self-described satire website, and an analysis using a third-party tool determined that it was 99.9 percent likely to be an AI-generated story. The article was subsequently repeated on social media without any indication that it came from a satire site, nor that it was AI-generated. There is no record of the actor having either been offered such a deal or having declined one.
The claim originated from an article (archived here) on esspots.com published on April 1, 2024, under the title:
Breaking: Keanu Reeves Rejects Marvel's $1.7 Billion 'Woke' Movie Offer, Says 'Woke Mind Virus Should Be Destroyed'
It began:
In a shocking turn of events, Hollywood heartthrob Keanu Reeves has made headlines by firmly rejecting a jaw-dropping $1.7 billion offer from Marvel Studios. The reason? Reeves boldly expressed his stance against what he termed as the "woke mind virus," indicating a clear departure from the prevalent trend of woke culture in the entertainment industry.
Below is how the post appeared at the time of this publication:
(Source: Esspots.com screenshot taken on Thu May 2 21:46:15 2024 UTC)
The above claim was later shared on Facebook on May 1, 2024, (archived here), with no indication that it originated from a satire site.
This is how that post looked on Facebook:
That Reeves had declined such an offer was a claim first published on the self-described satire website, Esspots. The website's "About" section (archived here) reads:
Welcome to the US page of Esspots (A Subsidiary of SpaceXMania.com specializing in Satire and Parody News), your one-stop destination for satirical news and commentary about the United States of America.
The article supposedly cited the actor's words in what was described as an "interview" but did not name or link to a published interview.
Lead Stories ran the text of the article through the Hive Moderation AI-detection tool, which determined that the post was 99.9 percent likely to have been written by AI:
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken Thu May 2 15:21:47 UTC 2024)
As Lead Stories previously reported, the supposed self-description of the writer who published the article stated that the man specializes in satirical pieces. According to Hive Moderation, that self-description was AI-generated, too.
Lead Stories also did a search using keywords on Google News, which indexes thousands of reliable information sites, visible here (archived here). The search found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
A Google keyword search of Reeves' supposed "woke" quote cited in the article, visible here (archived here), similarly did not return any relevant results.
The article in question also wrote that "hashtags such as #ReevesResists and #NoToWokeMovies [are] trending worldwide." Lead Stories searched X for each hashtag and found that no single post had used either as of this writing.
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot compilation taken on Thu May 2 16:40:00 2024 UTC)
Lastly, Lead Stories searched through Marvel media releases (archived here) published between October 5, 2023, and May 2, 2024, and found no reference to the supposed movie deal or Reeves' rejection of it.
Lead Stories contacted Marvel Studios and Reeves' publicist company for further comment. We will update this article accordingly if a response is received.
Other Lead Stories fact checks involving the entertainment industry can be read here.
