Did actor Jason Momoa say, "I can't stay here," implying he was leaving the U.S. in response to the 2024 U.S. presidential election results? No, that's not true: A social media post attributing those words to Momoa had no credible evidence that he said that publicly. Google searches also didn't produce any credible news reports confirming the post as of December 5, 2024.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on November 29, 2024. Beside a side-by-side image of Jason Momoa and a portion of a U.S. map with several states highlighted red and fewer states highlighted blue, the caption of the post said:
'I Can't Stay Here': Jason Momoa Quits Minecraft Live-Action Project Following Red Wave Controversy.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Dec 4 18:42:29 2024 UTC)
The post gave no information to confirm its claim, such as when or where Jason Momoa's supposed quote appeared.
In the comments, an article (archived here) was linked with the title, "'I Can't Stay Here': Jason Momoa Quits Minecraft Live-Action Project Following Red Wave Controversy." The article had homoglyph text in it.
Lead Stories ran a portion of the text from the article through Hive Moderation. This online artificial intelligence detection tool found it 99.8 percent "likely to be AI-Generated."
(Source: Hive Extension screenshots taken on Wed Dec 04 23:13:41 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories searched (archived here) using keywords from the post on Google News and found no credible reporting to confirm the claim.
The claim also said that Momoa had quit the "Minecraft live-action project." In an Instagram post from April 12, 2024, (archived here) on Momoa's verified Instagram account, he says in the caption that the cast and crew of the new Minecraft movie just wrapped up filming -- meaning that at least part of the project was done.
In a November 18, 2024, Instagram post (archived here), Momoa shared a video of a behind-the-scenes look at the Minecraft movie, writing that the trailer for the film would be released on November 19, 2024. The official trailer for "A Minecraft Movie" was published on the Warner Bros. Pictures' verified YouTube account on November 19, 2024. The caption says the movie will be in theaters in 2025.
Lead Stories reached out to a representative of Jason Momoa, and this fact check will be updated if a response is received.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Jason Momoa can be found here.
