'Gone With the Wind' Hits No. 1 on Amazon Best-Sellers Chart After HBO Max Drops Movie [View all]

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https://variety.com/2020/digital/uncategorized/gone-with-the-wind-amazon-best-seller-hbo-max-1234630577/

“Gone With the Wind” zipped to the top of Amazon’s best-sellers sales chart for TV and movies, a day after WarnerMedia’s HBO Max pulled the movie for “racist depictions.”

Amazon bases its rankings on sales data. The site currently offers the 70th anniversary two-disc DVD edition of “Gone With the Wind” starting at $29.55, while Amazon Video offers the movie as a digital HD rental at $3.99 and for purchase at $9.99.

Meanwhile, on Apple’s iTunes movie chart for the U.S., “Gone With the Wind” on Wednesday was in the No. 5 spot (after “The Hunt,” “Birds of Prey,” “Bad Boys for Life,” and “The Invisible Man”).

Oscar-winning film “Gone With the Wind” was removed Tuesday from the HBO Max streaming service temporarily. WarnerMedia said it plans to return to the movie to the library, along with a discussion about the historical context for the 1939 movie and a “denouncement” of the movie’s racist stereotypes.

“’Gone With The Wind’ is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society,” an HBO Max spokesperson told Variety. “These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible.”

“Gone With the Wind” stars Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Hattie McDaniel and Olivia de Havilland. The film, adapted from the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell, is described on Amazon.com’s website as “a classic epic of the American South,” set during the Civil War and the Reconstruction era.

The movie, produced by David O. Selznick, won eight competitive Oscars including best picture, best actress for Leigh, best director for Victor Fleming and best supporting actress for McDaniel, who was the first Black person to ever win an Academy Award. The American Film Institute ranks “Gone With the Wind” as the No. 4 best American movie of all time, after “Citizen Kane,” “Casablanca,” and “The Godfather.”