The American entertainment giant Walt Disney Corporation is not having its golden days nowadays. The most alarming development for the company is the series of box office flops it has experienced. Feature films, once the hero products of Disney which drove all other streams of revenue, have accumulated serious losses in recent years.
In 2022, that number amounted to an approximately $2 billion loss for the company, with releases such as Lightyear and Strange World. 2023 was not better for ‘The House of the Mouse’ either, with their adventure film Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny also racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in the red, despite the franchise being one of the most famous IPs in cinema history. That ‘feat’ was repeated by a brand new Disney IP as well. Wish released November 2023 also ended its theatrical run with nine-digit losses.
After a series of calamitous events like that, Disney shareholders were yearning for a change. Alas, however, they did not get it.
Nelson Peltz, a billionaire businessman and investor aligned with the Republican Party, was trying hard to deliver that change. He was campaigning to get his people elected as board members in Disney’s shareholders’ meeting on 3 April, but to no avail. All members of Disney’s board of directors were re-elected.
Peltz was actively speaking out against Disney’s ‘woke’ agenda, which he views as the main cause behind the company’s financial underperformance. Disney’s stock price peaked at $197.16 a share back in March 2021 and has failed to come anywhere near that since the stock market crash of 2022.
Ahead of the board member election, the price was steadily climbing, up to $123.25, in anticipation of a much-needed change of course away from woke messaging in children’s entertainment. However, since that change never came with the board being re-elected, the stock price fell two per cent before market close that day. It has fallen further since, currently sitting at $117.35 a share before market open on 9 April.
Disney has been in hot water for their woke agenda for a long time now.
In April 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of the Republican Party revoked the company’s special privileges in certain parts of the state for Disney actively campaigning against his Parental Rights in Education Act, which—much akin to Hungary’s Child Protection Act passed in June 2021—restricts the teaching of modern gender theory and the promotion of gender reassignment treatment in public schools.
Also, Disney garnered universal condemnation and ridicule online for casting Latina actress Rachel Zegler in the role of Snow White in their upcoming live-action feature film project, despite the name and previous popular depictions of the character. Since the announcement, Disney has delayed the release of their Snow White film, and has reportedly edited it to subdue some of the backlash.
They retroactively put in CGI dwarfs after originally replacing them with a diverse cast of ‘magical creatures’ to avoid being ‘ableist’. Also, industry rumours speculate that they are hiring a white child actress to play the childhood version of the titular character, thus limiting the screen time of the infamous Latina Snow White.
Disney’s new Snow White feature film is slated to come out in March 2025, as of now. However, even with these changes, it is on very shaky ground in terms of its possibility to generate profit, given the extended post-production edits drove up the production cost—all this is understandably not inspiring confidence in Disney's shareholders...
Related articles:
