Gina Carano and Disney Settle Their Legal Dispute

Gina Carano and Disney have settled their long-running legal dispute over her firing from the show The Mandalorian back in 2021. Here’s Carano’s statement about the settlement on X:

I have come to an agreement with Disney/Lucasfilm @disney @Lucasfilm which I believe is the best outcome for all parties involved. I hope this brings some healing to the force.

I want to extend my deepest most heartfelt gratitude to Elon Musk, @elonmusk a man I’ve never met,… https://t.co/qiAX7W1vgf

— Gina Carano 🕯 (@ginacarano) August 7, 2025

I want to extend my deepest most heartfelt gratitude to Elon Musk, @elonmusk  a man I’ve never met, who did this Good Samaritan deed for me in funding my lawsuit. Thank you Mr. Musk and @X for backing my case and asking for nothing in return.  

To my lawyers at @GSchaerr Schaerr|Jaffe who walked me through this unknown territory, thank you for your wisdom and guidance. 

I am humbled and grateful to God for His love and grace in this outcome. 

I’d like to thank you all for your unrelenting support throughout my life and career, you’ve been the heartbeat that has kept my story alive. I hope to make you proud.

I am excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter. My desires remain in the arts, which is where I hope you will join me.

Yes, I’m smiling. 

From my heart to yours,

Gina

 She’s thanking Elon Musk because he put up the money to back her lawsuit. Carano also linked to this Variety story which includes a statement from Disney.

A Lucasfilm spokesperson said in a statement provided to Variety, “The Walt Disney Company and Lucasfilm are pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement with Gina Carano to resolve the issues in her pending lawsuit against the companies. Ms. Carano was always well respected by her directors, co-stars and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect. With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms. Carano in the near future.”

Looking at the two statements I think it’s pretty clear who won this settlement. Carano is smiling and happy to move forward. Disney is reversing course, praising Carano as a professional who treated colleagues with kindness and suggesting they will hire her for future projects. That’s a long way from where they were in 2021. We don’t even need to go back that far. Just last summer, Disney was trying to get the lawsuit dismissed and a federal judge said no.

U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett on Wednesday pushed back on arguments from Disney lawyer Daniel Petrocelli, who argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the company has the “right not to associate with a high-profile performer on a high-profile show who’s imbuing” the Star Wars series with “views it disagrees with” that could turn fans away from the show.

Petrocelli urged the court to find in favor of Disney on its First Amendment defense on dismissal rather than at a later stage of litigation after discovery takes place in which it’s determined whether the case should be allowed to proceed to trial.

“I’m not convinced there are no disputed facts,” Judge Garnett responded. She pointed to allegations that Carano was terminated to deflect attention from Disney’s contentious business decisions at the time, including the company’s contract dispute with Scarlett Johansson and criticism of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which led to the dissolution of its special tax district in the state.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Gene Schaerr, a lawyer for the actress, stressed that the comments at issue in the case were made from Carano’s personal social media accounts.

“Nothing she said was on the show or on set,” he said as Carano sat at the defense table in the courtroom.

Disney has been a woke dumpster fire for several years. It’s pretty funny to look back at all of this and see their lawyers claiming they were protecting the Star Wars brand from harmful views. And then the same Disney would go on to release what is undeniably the most hated and stupid Star Wars property of all time (yes, including the original Holiday special) The Acolyte. I watched all of that train wreck and described it in detail here and here. Very briefly:

The message of this show, as structured, is that the awful behavior of the space police (the Jedi) should radicalize us all, maybe to the point of violence and revenge. Again, you can see how this might have seemed like a good idea to a certain group of Hollywood creatives in late 2020 or thereabouts. But in 2024 it just seems unhinged and completely at odds with everything Star Wars has been about up to now.

So Disney didn’t want Gina Carano to tarnish Star Wars but then spent $160 million turning Star Wars into a BLM fable in space. Nice work there.

I’m glad Carano won this settlement and I hope Disney is smart enough to retrace its steps over the past few years and realize they took some very serious wrong turns along the way. Given how things have been going at Disney, maybe that’s too much to hope. But, for now, Carano is happy so I’m trying to be positive.