Disney Exec Blames Woes on Racist, Sexist Fans
Newsletter reveals corporate arrogance behind Mouse House's fall
Few would deny Disney is in serious trouble.
Stock woes. Box office flops (“Wish,” “Haunted Mansion,” “The Marvels“). Theme park struggles. Beloved brands struggling for relevancy after years of culture dominance (Indiana Jones, Pixar, “Star Wars,” the MCU).
There’s a cottage industry of alternative media outlets documenting Disney’s decline.
- Nerdrotic
- The Critical Drinker
- The Quartering
- Film Threat
What went wrong?
The company’s hard-Left turn, for starters. Disney declared war on popular Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, pushed a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and embraced DEI principles behind closed doors.
Yet the company may not be listening to fans all but shouting for the Mouse House to course correct, and fast.
Bulwark Culture Editor Sonny Bunch shared a snippet from a recent Puck Newsletter suggesting Team Disney isn’t about to change its ways. The teaser comes from Matt Belloni of Puck News fame who spoke with an unnamed Disney executive on the company’s woes.
Said executive blamed consumers, not the company, for its problems. Audiences are too sexist, racist, etc. to embrace Disney product.
It’s not us. It’s you (racist).
I love this, from Matt Belloni's newsletter. Disney cannot fail, it can only be failed by the mouthbreathing bigots who refuse to acknowledge the greatness of their films. pic.twitter.com/83jkY4DL0x
— Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) February 19, 2024
“Everyone says ‘It’s the movies, stupid,’ which is an easy thing for people to say. More
appealing movies are a great way to jump the political issues. But more and more, our
audience (or the segment of the audience that has been politicized) equate the perceived
messaging in a film as a quality issue. They won’t say they find female empowerment
distasteful in The Marvels or Star Wars the latest trilogy starring Daisy Ridley], but they
will say they don’t like those movies because they are ‘bad.’ So ‘make better movies’
becomes code for ‘make movies that conform to regressive gender stereotypes or put
men front and center in the narrative.’
Except critics aren’t so keen on Disney’s recent product, either. Films like “Wish,” “The Marvels” and “Haunted Mansion” all fared poorly at Rotten Tomatoes. Others earned more positive reviews but hardly the kind of raves past Disney product earned.
Survey Says … It’s Complicated
A Puck-produced brand survey offered mixed results for Disney. On one hand, Disney, Inc. is suffering for its political leanings.
All 29 companies have high favorability ratings (that’s consistent with most opinion surveys of major companies), and people actually carry pretty positive feelings about the major studios. But Disney clearly scores the lowest, with 21 percent unfavorable. No other entertainment company had an unfavorable rating above 11 percent, meaning Disney is nearly twice as disliked as any other Hollywood entity we included. (Hulu, which is owned by Disney, scored especially well at only 8 percent unfavorable, indicating the problem is the Disney brand, not any of its sub-brands necessarily.)
Yet the same survey suggests consumers won’t take that into account if the Disney product in question seems entertaining.
Long story short?
If last year’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” trailer looked exciting, few would have connected the sequel to Disney’s ongoing woes.
It didn’t. The film proved to be a flop based on its gargantuan budget ($300 million versus $383 million worldwide gross).
Disney: Come See Our Films, Mr. and Mr. Racist
Disney still has considerable assets to build a comeback upon, including future sequels (“Moana 2,” “Inside Out 2,” “Toy Story 5”) effective belt-tightening measures and allegiances to the video game revolution.
Blaming audiences for the company’s problems, especially suggesting naysayers are bigots, hardly seems like the best way to heal the company’s financial wounds.
If one unnamed executive is saying it, chances are he or she is hardly alone.
Its not about entertaining people and giving its audiences original appealing unpolitical product . Its now lets give them give them this formalized politically correct left leaning product and if we they don’t like it tough luck. We can make more bad product until they get used to it. Its never going to end. At least we can watch old movies and reruns of what we used to enjoy. welcome to the new world where entertainment and appeal comes last.
I used to work for a newspaper that lost half of its subscribers within a couple of years. The editor, publisher and execs blamed the market when they were the real problem (trust me, I heard it directly from our subscribers). The folks at the top were making a lot of bad decisions, piling on more work without adding staff and hours to get it done. Therefore, some stories had to go by the wayside to make room for these other corporate priorities like “can you guess the photo,” “community leader profile” polls and the like. But without actual stories, there’s no content worth subscribing to. For some reason, the execs just didn’t understand that.
I have some sympathy for the business side of things here. The Internet changed everything. Classified ad revenue vanished. Etc. But some web sites and outlets continue to thrive, and the ones that do are connecting directly with the audience. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who blame themselves when something goes wrong and those that blame others. The former tend to be far more successful than the latter. They also tend to be more centrist or right leaning. As Jack Nicholson implied in “As Good as it Gets”, reason and accountability are crucial values for the development of a just society. People like this Disney exec simply don’t think that way. Even so, they have attained positions of power built on sand but their lack of internal locus will be their demise in fairly short order. The key is to not let them bring us down with them. As such, don’t support their companies, political proclivities, or other mental limitations. Laugh at them as their efforts fail over and over again.
Go Woke — Go Broke!
It’s that simple!
Disney in all its current iterations has nothing but hatred and contempt for the public it supposedly is entertaining and which it is actually propagandizing. It hates the American people, the American nation, and all of western civilization. It wishes to destroy them all and become the GLAVLIT [Soviet propaganda bureau] purveying Agitprop to adoring and subservient masses.
In return, we have learned to have contempt for and to avoid them. When somebody says they want to destroy you, you take it seriously and deal with them as you can. It took some doing. I admit that I am old. Back when TV’s were new things, I eagerly watched the Mickey Mouse Club and it helped shape my view of the world. The world Disney wants to impose will destroy me and mine. So they are expendable.
Subotai Bahadur
At some point I just decided my only vote in this deal is my $$. So my $ will not go to people who hate me and think I am racist, sexist, etc. There are companies out there who probably think that I am racist etc, but have not displayed it openly, and they still get my business. You have to actively campaign to get me to boycott, and Disnay has gotten my attention, just like Target and Bud Lite.
That means its going to be hard business to recapture, because they didn’t just disappoint me- they labeled me their enemy.
Clearly this executive thinks that Disney’s job is to shape society, not entertain it. Hubris rarely pays.
There has NEVER been a successful company that ignored the wishes of its target audience. Ford had the Edsel and this year, EV trucks. Some companies never learn. Disney has created its own doom loop.
The problem with “smart” executives like this person is that they bolt the hatch when they say those who disagree with them are essentially bad people. Once they make a comment like that, there’s no self reflection or any point of self criticism, therefore there will be no self improvement, as the seemingly never ending series of Disney flops illustrates. Better to ask why many, if not most, people prefer to see a man in a heroic role rather than a woman. The answer is obvious, and if these executives will not, or genuinely cannot see it, then they are in the wrong line of work. Simply put: they are the problem.
Execs should be eager for criticism, hungry for any insights into what they might be doing wrong. This … is the opposite reaction.
If you refer to your clientele as deplorable then they won’t come to your cinema showings. Go Woke Go Broke
Yup. You don’t need a degree in marketing to realize that. But here we are! Crazy world.
You do realize John Ringo, a no-talent hack, hijacked that word “woke”, right?
You do realize that no one cares?
“They won’t say they find female empowerment
distasteful” – do we REALLY have to explain again to these morons that we have had female heroes in movies for the last 100 years?!
It is so tiring to hear from studio executives who have no idea about the history of cinema. The wall street takeover of Hollywood means businessmen (not cinephiles) run Tinseltown, and they don’t have a clue.
I would like to see the name of the disney executive that said this. Also, why does this executive still have a job at disney? Why isn’t he/she terminated on the spot for saying these things?
I think you meant to say, ‘how long before he/she gets a raise?” 🙂
actuall, it’s he/she/other….
Shouldn’t that be “she/he”?
Because the owners consider you an enemy.
As a straight white bigot sandwich I’ll happily take the blame for all of Disney’s failures
Can’t wait until Stellar Blade drops and sells like hotcakes GOTY 2024 Come back to this comment
This evil executive sounds like a political activist.
Regression gender stereotypes pays the bills.
This column is obviously outdated and obsolete, because Disney just scored a major win with the box office success of ‘Madame Web” this past weekend.
Oh, wait …
Madame Web is Sony, not Disney.
That’s an easy mistake that a lot of people are making. I wonder why…
Well, it wasn’t Disney… they’re not the only ones with massive flops, it seems 😉
Hahahaha nope