Studio Denies Bizarre DiCaprio Bear-Rape Rumor

The new Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Revenant features no scenes whatsoever of the star being raped by a bear, Fox stressed after bizarre rumors swept the Internet on Tuesday. The studio decided it had to clarify the issue after a Drudge Report story claimed that DiCaprio's character, frontiersman Hugh Glass, was raped twice as part of a brutal mauling, Variety reports. "As anyone who has seen the movie can attest, the bear in the film is a female who attacks Hugh Glass because she feels he might be threatening her cubs," a Fox rep tells Entertainment Weekly. "There is clearly no rape scene with a bear."

Vanity Fair traced the rumor to Hollywood journalist Roger Friedman, who, unlike every other reviewer, interpreted the mauling as molestation. In a Showbiz411 post, Friedman declared the scene with a CGI bear "a movie mystery because it is as real feeling as Bruce the shark in Jaws 40 years ago." "It's as real looking as it could be, and maybe the most frightening moment I've seen in a film in eons," he wrote. Vanity Fair notes that even Jeb Bush's communications director joined the debate over the scene, tweeting: "Are there any recorded examples of a bear raping a human in real life?" (DiCaprio is widely expected to win an Oscar for his performance.)