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Is there evidence that Disney suffered O($10B) from the DeSantis fight? I don't think it's really penetrated among the biggest Disney consumers (children and women obsessed with princess fantasies). Even the fact that it's in a rut putting out boring, derivative content is probably a bigger factor.
If that's the core market, or an important part, then the decisions they've made recently have not helped. Look at the controversy over the recent Snow White live-action remake, which hasn't even been released yet. The leads giving interviews about scrapping the love story, dumping the prince, and the struggle between Snow White and the Evil Queen being over who is the "fairest" (read: most just) ruler is going to fundamentally change the story beyond just updating it for 2023. They're also getting rid of the Seven Dwarfs and bringing in seven 'magical creatures' instead, a move that has been roundly mocked due to the set photos that got released. Disney at first denied these were real, but were eventually forced to admit that yes, they were real, they just weren't official.
Revamp the princesses too much, and you lose the audience.
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The rut is related to woke programming. Without DeSantis the programming still would’ve been woke and bad, but it fit the narrative that DeSantis helped create.
Disney was family; not necessarily women and kids obsessed with princesses (though of course they offered that). They need to try to rebuild that family brand.
I’m not sure how easy it is to rebuild a family reputation. It’s a matter of the broken trust. Disney is not longer the “it’s okay to let my kids see this movie or TV show without worrying about it” company. And without that level of trust, that parents can really be sure that content they’re putting out won’t be full of woke propaganda, sexual content, rude and obnoxious behavior, parents are not going to feel safe letting their kids watch Disney. Basically, especially as it concerns kids, watching the content is the same as trusting an adult with those values around your kid. Everyone knows that kids pick that stuff up.
The only reason that it’s a slow loss is that most of the rest of Hollywood TV and movies are equally bad in content. Even though I’m not Christian, about the only content I’d feel safe plopping a 5 year old in front of made after the 1969s is evangelical stuff. At least that way I can know that they won’t be subjected to propaganda, sexual content, or rude and obnoxious behavior in their TV and movie choices.
This leaves the question of how Christian entertainment goes mainstream for kids stuff. It’s kids stuff, it doesn’t have to be good, and lots of people are trying to pick the twenty dollar bill up off the sidewalk.
I think it would be much better if it didn’t feel like it has to preach at you or overtly quote the Bible. The biggest problem they have, for me is that they come off preaching at the audience all the time. You can show faith by actions and make good moral characters and show them doing good moral things without having to tell the audience. The best examples I can give off the top of my head are 7th Heaven and Little House on the Prarrie. In both, it was pretty obvious that the families were Christians, but the producers and writers didn’t feel the need to have everything boil down to “the message” and related Bible citations.
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VeggieTales seems to have been the one that cracked the conundrum, but nobody managed to replicate it since.
The recipe is one part captive audience (this was always 'Churches looking for Sunday school material' or other Christian parents looking for something that was, well, Christian), one part strangely competent 3D animation team (cartoons don't need to be complex re: industry dominated by low-cost CalArts style for the last 10 years, they just need to not look outright bad- simple objects that bend, thus "veggies", were arguably the ideal way to do this in the late '90s), one part sane storyboarders who can keep the message in their pants for more than 5 minutes, and one part parents that won't get a bug up their ass about it being a chocolate bunny instead of a golden idol even though the message works better (especially with that age group) if you use the former.
It is my opinion that you need all 4 of those things to make that kind of media work, and to a point it's why that group persisted. The other medias of this type were just... boring, like so fucking boring- they might have meant well but you can only do so much with kid's choir, puppet shows, and a host that's totally not going to be dealing with rape allegations in 20 years.
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Agreed. But that’s why you need a public reputation. Sure LGBT aligned NGOs will bellyache but they aren’t really Disney’s core audience.
Chapek was right to want to stay out of politics and it seems like the biggest problem was his board support was a lesbian.
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