Woke Disney To Destroy Popular ‘Frontierland’ Attraction
Disney has announced plans to destroy one of the most beautiful parts of Disney World — a key part of the park that celebrates American history.Disney has announced plans to destroy one of the most beautiful parts of Disney World — a key part of the park that celebrates American history.Gina Carano responds to rumors about Elon Musk using her lawsuit in Disney acquisition scheme
Actress and former mixed martial artist Gina Carano recently addressed the rumors that South African billionaire Elon Musk might be using her lawsuit against Disney to drive down the company's stock value as a means to ultimately acquire the House of Mouse at a favorable price.
Fellow actor Matthew Marsden detailed for Blaze News the significance of a possible Disney takeover by Musk as well as what it would entail.
Background
Carano played the character Cara Dune on the smash hit Disney series "The Mandalorian," providing the show with a genuinely strong female protagonist. However, in February 2021 — following the conclusion of the show's second season and several months after she enraged LGBT radicals by jokingly stating her pronouns were "beep/bop/boop" — Lucasfilm canned Carano, letting her find out herself from second-hand sources.
"Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future," said a Lucasfilm spokesman. "Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable."
'He wants justice.'
Her offense? A post pointing out parallels between COVID authoritarianism and the rise of Nazi Germany and how political hatred has the potential to grow into something truly monstrous.
"Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children," the post said. "Because history is edited, most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"
Meanwhile, Disney has generally been unfazed by similar Nazi comparisons advanced by its leftist talent — along with all manner of unhinged political commentary.
Months after Carano's firing, a Rasmussen poll would reveal that 59% of Democratic voters supported confining the unvaccinated to their homes, and 48% of Democratic voters indicated they supported imprisoning those who questioned the efficacy of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.
Earlier this year, Carano kicked the legs out from under Disney's framing of her ouster, stating:
The truth is I was being hunted down from everything I posted to every post I liked because I was not in line with the acceptable narrative of the time. My words were consistently twisted to demonize & dehumanize me as an alt right wing extremist. It was a bullying smear campaign aimed at silencing, destroying & making an example out of me.
Carano took Elon Musk up on his open offer of legal support to those fired over lawful exercises of free speech and sued Disney in February for wrongful termination and sex discrimination.
The complaint reportedly accused Disney of harassment, defamation, engaging in a "post-termination smear campaign," and attempting to cajole Carano into conforming with the corporate behemoth's views on BLM and gender ideology.
Disney has desperately tried to kill the suit in the months since, but its efforts have proven unsuccessful. In the meantime, the value of the company's stock has continued to sag.
Agnostic about rumors but keen on change
Carano appeared on the Friday episode of "The Shawn Ryan Show" for a nearly 4-hour conversation about various matters, including her Christian faith, her unceremonious ouster from Disney, and her plans for the future.
Carano made clear that while her cancellation has made her life exceptionally difficult, there was no way she was ever going to bend the knee to the Mouse: "I don't worship your business and my God is bigger than Disney."
While her faith evidently kept her going, she underscored the importance of the help afforded her by Musk.
"If it wasn't for Elon Musk, we'd be in a really scary place," said Carano. "He wants justice. I think he's a — I've never met him, I've never spoken to him but I couldn't be more grateful for what he's been doing in my life."
Late in the interview, Ryan raised the matter of Elon Musk possibly buying Disney.
Musk, who has publicly stated "Disney sucks," helped fuel such speculation in February when he told a reporter at a film premiere, "I'm just here with friends, thinking about companies to acquire."
At the time, Musk was attending the premiere of "Lola" with billionaire activist investor Nelson Peltz who had previously expressed interest in taking over Disney.
In April, Musk suggested he would buy a stake in Disney if Peltz was elected to its board, posting, "His track record is excellent."
Peltz, who has decried Disney's capture by race obsessives as well as its recent turn towards lecherous themes, was unable to secure seats on Disney's board. The Hollywood Reporter indicated in May that Peltz dumped his entire stake in the company for $120 a share, which works out to roughly $1 billion.
'I hope that's what's happening.'
"Taking over Disney would be a huge thing," WDW Pro of the independent entertainment news outlet That Park Place suggested this week.
"That is why this funding of the lawsuit for Gina Carano not only serves the purpose of helping her, but it may also be a huge strategy component of getting that stock down," he elaborated. "And partly the way you get that stock down is you put out into discovery and out into depositions and out into the public knowledge the stuff that's been going on behind the scenes at Disney."
Musk has acknowledged that the case will have an impact, writing on July 26, "The discovery on this case will be devastating for the woke mind virus that controls Disney."
Ryan told Carano, "I've heard rumors that the longer this lawsuit drags out and the more involved Elon gets, the lower the Disney stock tanks, and that he might be thinking he might buy Disney."
Between the lawsuit's filing and April, Walt Disney Company stock gradually climbed; however, it has been in decline since. At the time of publication, its stock is trading south of $86. It's unclear if there has been any correlation between the case and the stock price, let alone a causal link.
"Do you think there's any validity to that?" asked Ryan.
Carano, who elsewhere in the interview indicated she has yet to actually meet Musk in person, responded, "I have no idea. I think there's a lot of rumors. But I think it'd be pretty cool if he did."
"I hope that's what's happening," said Ryan.
The actress immediately launched into a passionate tirade explaining why she regards it as critically important that those with dissenting views stand up to Hollywood prejudice and intolerance.
Carano indicated that while she has received invitations to speak at conservative and Republican events, she does not want to shy away from the cultural war or cede critical territory to the radicals. Accordingly, she seeks venues and events where she may not necessarily be welcome.
"I want to stay in the art space because that's where people shy away from and that's where we need to be," said Carano. "Somebody needs to be fighting in the art space."
Blaze News attempted to reach out to Carano with an inquiry about whether she would be willing to return to Disney with Musk at the helm to either reprise the role of Cara Dune or produce content for the company but did not receive a response by deadline.
What would a takeover look like and mean?
Actor Matthew Marsden explained to Blaze News that people are generally aware of both of the institutional importance of Disney and of how Musk — one of the only tech billionaires willing to support free speech against woke censorship — was able to rejuvenate X. Naturally, this understanding has given way to the hope that Musk might seek to replicate his success with the House of Mouse.
"Do I think he will buy Disney? Well, I'd love that to happen. Do I think that it would happen? Probably not," said Marsden.
Marsden noted, however, that Musk appears to be a long-term thinker and that Disney's decline and potential breakup — a selloff of Lucasfilm or Marvel, for instance — may produce opportunities down the line too good for him to ignore. This to say, an acquisition is possible just not imminent.
"I think that Disney is in free fall, and if Elon was just to leave it for a couple more years, then it's just going to keep going down," said Marsden, noting that the present leadership appears keen to keep making the same mistakes that have alienated fans and resulted in a slew of box office bombs.
The trouble of an acquisition at this stage is that owing to the nature of production and scheduling, Musk would have to eat the cost of woke films planned and paid for long in advance.
"I think that he's going to have to cancel a lot of those films that are in the pipeline. A considerable investment has been put into them, so that's kind of problematic — but he will have to cancel them," said Marsden. "If he was going to purchase it, he'd have to fire a lot of people because there have been a lot of DEI hires there."
The actor indicated that the type of Disney talent that produced "The Acolyte" would need to hit the bricks.
Fortunately, Marsden indicated there are plenty of filmmakers, storytellers, and craftsmen, both in and outside Disney who are frustrated with the current state of play who would love to resume work on the kind of content that once made the company great.
Marsden also indicated Musk would have to curate Disney content such that families could once again leave their kids alone with a Disney show or movie without having to worry about their little minds being poisoned.
As far as potential advisors, Marsden suggested that Musk or any deep-pocketed billionaire willing to step in would benefit from bringing on the likes of Nerdrotic, the Critical Drinker, Geeks, and online commentators with a finger on the pulse of what's presently ailing Disney.
Marsden intimated that Disney's reform would be a greater triumph than simply building an alternative because reforming Disney was "the gold standard."
"It's the premiere content creator for children in the world," said Marsden. "Glenn Beck loves it. All of us — I certainly grew up loving Disney. I loved it when I used to go there. It was a very magical place. ... It's not just a company, right? It's something very, very special and it did embody the values of the United States."
Marsden continued:
If you're talking about other companies, it wouldn't matter so much. Sony or, you know, even Universal doesn't matter so much as Disney and what Disney represents. Elon has gone and he targeted X. If he goes and he targets Disney — it makes sense why he would — but it's a much bigger thing.
In other words, recapturing the Magic Kingdom would signal a monumental shift in the culture war. Your move, Elon.
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Disney actively looking for trans actors to star in new 'Little Mermaid' show
Disney made some waves when it cast a black actress to play Ariel in its 2023 live-action adaption of "The Little Mermaid." The company is apparently now entertaining the possibility of making a bigger splash with a transvestite actor in its upcoming musical stage production at Hollywood Studios.
Disney has in recent months sought video submissions from "Equity actors" of both sexes and all ethnicities for the roles of Ariel and Prince Eric in "The Littler Mermaid - A Musical Adventure."
Walt Disney World News revealed earlier this month that casting director Erika Ureña refined the open call to specify that for the role of the "spirited, fun-loving, yet curious mermaid princess," the company was looking for a white woman or white male transvestite between the ages of 18 and 30.
Included among the songs the actor or actress playing Ariel will sing at the Animation Courtyard Theater in the Walt Disney Resort is a number titled, "Kiss the Girl." The lead will also sing "Daughters of Triton."
Prince Eric, too, could be played by a member of the opposite sex. Ureña's posting indicated that for the non-singing role, Disney was looking for a white man or a "transgender man" between the ages of 18 and 30.
This potentially transvestic adaptation will replace the "Voyage of the Little Mermaid," which was a feature show at the Animation Courtyard from January 1992 until the pandemic.
While Disney has evidenced on multiple occasions its willingness to cast transvestites in various roles, That Park Place indicated that this is the first time the company is openly advertising it.
'I realized that I was just being gaslighted.'
Blaze News previously reported that a conservative Christian family paid for a meet-and-greet with the Evil Queen at the Walt Disney World Resort in April. When it came time to take pictures and glad-hand with the Disney cast member, they realized that instead of a poisoned apple, the Evil Queen had an Adam's apple. The father told That Park Place that when he complained, the manager assured him that "she is a woman."
"She went even further, trying to shame me, informing me that 'she' was so excited to get the part as the Evil Queen," said the father. "For a brief moment, I thought, 'Oh ... maybe I’m wrong,' but then I realized that I was just being gaslighted."
At the time, John F. Trent, the editor in chief of That Park Place, told Blaze News that this "appears to be a continued pattern from the Walt Disney Company and its 'not-at-all-secret gay agenda,' as the company's Latoya Raveneau confirmed in March 2022."
"It is clearly trying to target small children, their families, and even adults in an attempt to warp their minds into believing this objective evil is normal or even good," added Trent.
Disney park-goers have in recent years shared footage online showing other other cast members in drag, including mustachioed men in dresses dealing with young children.
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Magic Kingdom erased 'Song of the South' elements from Splash Mountain. The remake may be another Disney flop.
Radicals hostile to America and the West committed to a campaign of deracination and iconoclasm in the summer of 2020, digging up graves, toppling statues, renaming animals, melting down busts, knocking out church windows, and killing off iconic brands. Disney made sure to get in on the action.
Amidst the deadly BLM riots, Disney announced that it would overhaul one of its featured theme park rides: Splash Mountain. Apparently, the ride prickled race obsessives with its depiction of characters and songs from "Song of the South" — Disney's Oscar-winning 1946 musical wherein a former slave shares folk tales during the Reconstruction era.
Despite blowing an estimated $150 million on the overhaul and engaging in a concerted hype campaign, it appears Disney has yet another flop on its hands.
'The new concept is inclusive — one that all of our guests can connect with and be inspired by.'
Splash Mountain first opened in Disneyland in 1989. Disney World in Orlando got its own version a few years later. On both coasts, the ride featured the tale of Br'er Rabbit and his daring escape from a fox and bear. The ride's flume 52.5-foot drop plopped generations of guests down the river and into the moist safety of a mock briar batch.
Anthropomorphic animals and a coherent narrative in a Southern setting were evidently too much to bear.
On June 25, 2020, Disney revealed that Splash Mountain — at both Disneyland park in California and the Magic Kingdom park in Florida — will soon be completely reimagined. The theme is inspired by an all-time favorite animated Disney film, "The Princess and the Frog.'"
"The approach to retheming or 'plussing' attractions (as Walt Disney referred to it) begins with Imagineers asking the question, how can we build upon or elevate the experience and tell a fresh, relevant story?" said the statement. "And with this long-standing history of updating attractions and adding new magic, the retheming of Splash Mountain is of particular importance today. The new concept is inclusive — one that all of our guests can connect with and be inspired by, and it speaks to the diversity of the millions of people who visit our parks each year."
Despite over 100,000 fans petitioning Disney to spare Splash Mountain, Disney closed the ride in both parks in early 2023.
'It had kind of run its course.'
While the new ride based on a box office underperformer uses the same tracks as Splash Mountain and riders still travel in railed rafts fashioned to look like hollowed-out logs, the New York Times reported that Disney spent an estimated $150 million to alternatively tell the story of lead character Tiana's efforts to cobble together a band for a Mardi Gras party using all-new decorations, audio, and animatronics.
Ted Robledo, the ride's executive creative director, stressed to the Times the various signs of "diversity" at play, by which he meant a black protagonist, three types of music, and signage in Spanish and French.
“We're always looking at ways to cast a wider net," said Robledo. "With the old property, for a variety of reasons, it wasn't that relevant any more. It had kind of run its course."
The Times alluded to some signals that potential park guests aren't interested.
A nine-minute point-of-view video tour of the ride uploaded to YouTube had 10,000 thumbs up and over 38,000 thumbs down as of Monday. That Park Place estimated the ratio of positive to negative comments on the video to be roughly 1:200.
Numerous annual pass holders permitted to preview the ride in person ahead of its grand opening later this month have also effectively given "Tiana's Bayou Adventure" thumbs down.
According to Inside the Magic, the ride has been beset by malfunctions and breakdowns. Apparently the ride's hardware has trouble sustaining and communicating with the new animatronics.
Various videos shared online show new characters frozen in place while dialogue and music eerily play on. Last week, on at least one occasion, guests reportedly had to be evacuated following a ride malfunction.
It's unclear whether the new ride will survive as long as its predecessor, given the initial backlash as well as its apparent failure to win over race obsessives.
Katie Kapurch, an English professor at Texas State University, told the Associated Press that the new ride is silent on the "racial realities of the segregated eras they depict."
"We might see the impulse to replace rather than dismantle or build anew as a metaphor for structural racism, too," Kapurch said. "Again, this is unintentional on Disney's part, but the observation gets to the heart of how Disney reflects America back to itself."
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Disney removes 'problematic' character from meet-and-greets — and no, it's not the park's cross-dressing Evil Queen
Disney has in recent years reportedly taken to having transvestites assume the roles of certain iconic female characters in its parks. Apparently, the company — growing increasingly synonymous with box office bombs — saw an opportunity to deprive actresses of at least one more female role at the Magic Kingdom: Tinker Bell.
Whereas the company evidently sees no issue with mustachioed men in dresses dealing with young children, it reportedly regards the fictional character from J.M. Barrie's 1904 play "Peter Pan," later made iconic in the 1953 Walt Disney film of the same name, as "problematic."
Branding her as such on account of her interest in a member of the opposite sex and likely her femininity as well, Disney has effectively clipped Tinker Bell's wings and thrown her into storage.
That Park Place's Jonas Campbell told Blaze News, "I suspect that Disney would work harder to keep the character in the parks if the Peter Pan & Wendy film that race-swapped Tinker Bell had been more successful, instead of being dumped onto Disney+ and forgotten."
"That attempt at 'updating' the character did not resonate with audiences, and not long after we see a mainstay meet-and-greet character played by young, athletic, white female performer disappear from Disney's biggest resort," added Campbell.
Background
In 2017, Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors, "We can take those values, which we deem important societally, and actually change people's behavior — get people to be more accepting of the multiple differences and cultures and races and all other facets of our lives and our people."
In the years since, Disney has worked ardently to socially engineer the audience Iger feels it deserves. That campaign has involved transmogrifying Disney's intellectual properties and eliminating nonconforming content.
'These stereotypes were wrong then and are now.'
The so-called experts behind the company's Stories Matter team have thought long and hard about what beloved characters are offensive to postmodern sensibilities.
The New York Times reported in 2022 that the Stories Matter experts' thin skin broke when watching episodes of "The Muppet Show" from the 1970s. The offending episodes, like other older Disney films such as "Dumbo," were slapped with disclaimers indicating they contained "negative depictions or mistreatment of people or cultures."
"These stereotypes were wrong then and are now," read the disclaimers.
The professionally offended Stories Matter team also took issue with various iconic Disney characters such as Ursula from "The Little Mermaid" — a supposedly "queer coded" character with skin dark enough to prompt concerns about racism, reported the Times.
Captain Hook from "Peter Pan," a film taken off children's Disney+ profiles for "breaching content advisories," was also deemed problematic. Whereas some viewers might conclude from Disney's depiction of a villain missing a hand that amputees can be morally dynamic like everyone else, the Times indicated executives feared Hook could be interpreted as a slight against the disabled.
Tinker Bell was among the characters slated for destruction because she is "body conscious" and desirous of Peter Pan's attention.
Ousting the fairy
Tinker Bell was not only used for decades in Disney advertisements but was a popular meet-and-greet character at Walt Disney World prior to the pandemic. During the pandemic, however, she disappeared along with all other such characters. Although the various costumed cast members ultimately returned to their posts, Tinker Bell was noticeably absent.
'Tinker Bell is significant to many longtime Disney fans because of her direct association with Walt.'
Inside the Magic recently reported that her signage has been officially removed from Town Square Theater, signaling her banishment from the Magic Kingdom's meet-and-greets. Guests apparently can only now meet Disney's iconic rodent at Bell's former stomping grounds.
According to Inside the Magic, Tinker Bell's presence in the park has more or less been reduced to a silent flyby, a mute cameo on a float, and an old statue.
The Plan Disney Committee indicated in February, "At present, Tinker Bell does not hold a 'meet and greet' opportunity at Walt Disney World Resort. Of course, she does make her evening flight over Magic Kingdom Park at the end of the Happily Ever After nighttime fireworks show!"
Outside the Magic Kingdom, there remains the possibility of a meet-and-greet with the fairy at the Disneyland Resort in California, but that too may change.
Jonas Campbell told Blaze News, "Tinker Bell is significant to many longtime Disney fans because of her direct association with Walt and the identity of the company that holds the IP rights to his name."
"If you look at the Disney+ logo graphic of a semi-circle being formed over the name, that's a callback to the Walt Disney Pictures logo of Tinker Bell flying over the castle," continued Campbell. "Tinker Bell used to appear in the Disneyland TV series and the 'Wonderful World of Disney' with Walt during his segments."
Campbell suggested the timing of Tinker Bell's ouster is strategic.
"I think Disney is taking the opportunity while demand is down for the character," said Campbell. "They closed down the division that made the Tinker Bell / Pixie Hollow movies and specials, and they never brought the character back to Walt Disney World for a meet-and-greet. The character is currently appearing in some parades and as part of the nighttime spectaculars, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this aspect updated as soon as the company can find a different character that current Imagineering fits."
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De-transitioner warns shareholders that Disney will pay a price for 'stealing the voices of thousands of little Ariels'
A victim of so-called "gender-affirming care" informed Disney shareholders Wednesday that the company may soon face lawsuits over its support of employees' genital mutilations. Chloe Cole, a woman left permanently scarred by gender ideology, further stressed the importance of the company looking into providing benefits for those who seek to "detransition."
The woke company
The Walt Disney Company has worked hard to earn the admiration of LGBT radicals, securing for itself a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index since 2007.
The corporate behemoth has signaled its ideological compliance in various ways.
Besides throwing around its weight in an effort to dissuade lawmakers from executing the will of voters and upholding parental rights, Disney also covers travels expenses for its employees to kill their unborn children. For those children ultimately permitted to live, Disney offers "gender affirmation benefits."
Accordingly, Disney helps employees, their spouses, and their children get sex-change mutilations, elective mastectomies, and ruinous hormone therapies.
The company does so even though:
- the so-called experts at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health — the organization that wrote the go-to guide on "gender-affirming care" — have been outed admitting in private both that children cannot provide informed consent and sex-change surgeries can have nightmarish consequences;
- England's National Health Service has highlighted there is little to no evidence showing an upside to the use of puberty blockers in minors;
- Finland's leading child psychiatrist Riittakerttu Kaltiala has underscored that most kids will grow out of the delusion that their gender and sex are misaligned; and
- the core claim used by gender ideologues to justify sex-change mutilations has been utterly debunked.
The scarred patient
Chloe Cole, 19, knows firsthand just how devastating the treatments that Disney's employee benefits cover can be.
Cole told the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine Joint Rules/Legislative Committee in 2022, "At 13, I started taking puberty blockers and testosterone. At 15, I underwent a double mastectomy in which my breasts were removed and my nipples were grafted. And yet, at 16, after years of medically transitioning, I came to realize I severely regretted my transition."
"I want to be a mother someday, and yet I can never naturally feed ... my future children. My breasts were beautiful and now they have been incinerated for nothing. Thank you, modern medicine," said Cole.
The gender ideology victim, who noted at the time that her chest remained scarred and her nipples continued to bleed, has become a patient advocate for Do No Harm. DNH represents medical professionals, patients, and policymakers keen on ridding the medical establishment of identity politics and gender ideology.
In addition to raising awareness about the fallout of "gender-affirming care," Cole has also taken legal action against Kaiser Permanente, accusing the institution and her former doctors of performing experimental and mutilating treatment.
The shareholder meeting
Cole called into Disney's annual shareholders meeting Wednesday, underscoring the consequence of the procedures they cover and the possibility there may be legal consequences on the horizon.
"Disney pays for gender transition interventions, but not de-transitioning care. Therefore, the Company discriminates based on gender identity under EEOC regulations," said Cole. "I speak from personal experience as someone who was deceived and physically harmed at a young age by gender ideology, validated by the medical industry, and pushed to the masses by corporations like Disney."
Cole detailed how, as a minor, she was given irreversible puberty blockers and a double mastectomy.
"My body has been irreversibly damaged, and years later, my chest is still in bandages," continued Cole. "My doctors have abandoned me. Now doctors look and shrug."
Cole further noted that she has filed suit against "those professionals who steered me into taking these destructive steps that have permanently scarred me."
"But Disney, in its arrogance, has responded to our proposal by stating that I am only trying to 'generate attention' for a 'limited agenda.' Mr. Iger, Disney under your watch is pushing the 'limited agenda' of gender ideology," continued Cole. "Disney has become the Ursula that is stealing the voices of thousands of little Ariels across the world by telling us we can be something that we can never become."
"The lawsuits are coming, sir. It’s only a matter of time before current or past employees, whose bodies and lives have been irreversibly harmed, will show up at your door looking for justice and restitution," added Cole.
Just got off the phone from the @Disney annual shareholders meeting.\n\nI needed to call out Bob Iger and the rest of the board\u2019s hypocrisy and the dangerous lies they feed to us through the media. \n\nHere is what I said:— (@)
The proposal
Cole concluded her call by requesting that shareholders consider the "Gender-Based Compensation Gaps and Associated Risks" proposal presented by the National Legal and Policy Center.
The proposal asks that Disney investigate its benefits policies to determine whether they are discriminatory against de-transitioners.
It specifically requests that the board of directors issue a report by Dec. 31 "about compensation and health benefit gaps, which should include how they address dysphoria and de-transitioning care across gender classifications, including associated reputational, competitive, operational and litigative risks, and risks related to recruiting and retaining diverse talent."
The NLPC indicated that the company's board of directors has opposed the proposal because it "intended to serve the particular interest of the proponent."
The board unsuccessfully sought permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year to exclude the proposal from consideration at the annual meeting.
The NLPC noted in its response, filed with the SEC, that "besides the inherent discriminatory infrastructure established by Disney within its compensation policies and programs, the Company has opened the door wide to reputational and legal risk due to gender ideology and the affirmation of sex transitioning medical coverage. The de-transitioners' litigiousness may be at a trickle now, but the diversity-obsessed Company should prepare for an eventual flood of lawsuits from angry, mutilated current and former employees."
While Cole was able to put the proposal before the shareholders, the Huffington Post indicated they ultimately rejected it.
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Mickey Mouse is teased as a ruthless murderer just one day after entering the public domain
Walt Disney's most profitable rodent has scurried out of the company's total control and into bloody new arenas.
Despite the corporate giant's desperate lobbying efforts to once again alter American copyright law to suit its purposes, Disney's Mickey Mouse entered into the public domain Monday along with various other notable characters and creative works, including "Mack the Knife," Charlie Chaplin's "The Circus," Buster Keaton' "The Cameraman," Agatha Christie's "The Mystery of the Blue Train," and Peter Pan.
The ratty-looking versions of the mouse seen in the 1928 animated short films "Steamboat Willie," "Plane Crazy," and "Gallopin' Gaucho" appear to be getting a similar treatment to that recently received by Winnie the Pooh — another beloved animated character re-imagined as a savage killer following his entry into the public domain in 2022.
Killer mouse
Video game developer Nightmare Forge Games released a trailer Monday for its upcoming survival horror title Infestation 88, featuring a sickly-looking Mickey who hunts down player-controlled exterminators in a dark warehouse.
"In the year 1988, what was thought be an outbreak of vermin morphed into something far more sinister," reads the description of the game on Steam. "Prepare to face and eliminate a horrific entity, with each episode containing a distinct classic character or urban legend responsible for the infestation."
Infestation 88 - Official Reveal Traileryoutu.be
A trailer also dropped Monday for a live-action slasher film entitled "Mickey's Mouse Trap," featuring a menace wearing a Mickey mask stalking prospective victims and attacking an individual.
"A place for fun, a place for friends, a place for hunting. The mouse is out," the trailer telegraphs.
The plot of the film, directed by Jamie Bailey, is described thusly on IMDB: "It's Alex's 21st Birthday, but she's stuck at the amusement arcade on a late shift so her friends decide to surprise her, but a masked killer dressed as Mickey Mouse decides to play a game of his own with them which she must survive."
MICKEY'S MOUSE TRAP FILM TEASER TRAILER (2024) - FIRST EVER MICKEY MOUSE HORROR FILM!!!!youtu.be
The Hollywood Reporter indicated the film does not have a release date and that it's unclear if its producers have a distributor on board.
"We just wanted to have fun with it all. I mean it’s Steamboat Willie's Mickey Mouse murdering people," Bailey said in a statement. "It's ridiculous. We ran with it and had fun doing it and I think it shows."
Copies and rights
Both horror adaptations specifically feature the likeness of the mouse debuted in the late 1920s since all more recent versions remain the strict intellectual property of Disney, including the sorcerer's apprentice seen in the 1940 film "Fantasia" as well as the rodent featured in dozens of animated films throughout the 1930s.
Kembrew McLeod, an intellectual property scholar at the University of Iowa, stressed to NPR that "[w]hat is going into the public domain is this particular appearance in this particular film."
"Ever since Mickey Mouse's first appearance in the 1928 short film Steamboat Willie, people have associated the character with Disney's stories, experiences, and authentic products," a Disney spokesman told the Associated Press over the weekend. "That will not change when the copyright in the Steamboat Willie film expires."
Whereas copyrights can lapse, "trademark law has no end," Harvard Law School professor Ruth Okediji told NPR.
While the "Steamboat Willie" mouse can be shared, copied, and repurposed, Disney's trademark on Mickey Mouse apparently precludes people from using the character in such a way that misleads consumers into thinking the work has the blessing of the House of Mouse.
Okediji warned that trademark law could be used to "effectively extend the life of a copyrighted work."
In the case of Mickey, Disney might intervene if adaptations could be argued to infringe on or dilute the corresponding trademark on account of how the mouse is used.
Daniel Mayeda from the UCLA School of Law similarly warned that adaptations could prove dicey, telling the Guardian in 2022, "You can use the Mickey Mouse character as it was originally created to create your own Mickey Mouse stories or stories with this character. But if you do so in a way that people will think of Disney – which is kind of likely because they have been investing in this character for so long – then in theory, Disney could say you violated my copyright."
Disney indicated in a statement that extra to protecting "[its] rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright," it would "safeguard against consumer confusion caused by unauthorized uses of Mickey and our other iconic characters."
Harvard Law Professor Rebecca Tushnet suggested in October that "people should be free to use the materials despite the existence of trademark rights, because trademark law shouldn't be able to stop you from doing what copyright law allows you to do and is set up to allow you to do. It's no accident that things go into the public domain."
However, Tushnet added that the "contours of that are as yet unclear, precisely because Congress lengthened the copyright term, and so we didn't get this problem until recently."
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Bombshell Audit Reveals How Disney Bribed And Scammed Its Way Into An Unaccountable Florida Empire
Little did Disney know it was no match for DeSantis — or that its belligerent gay agenda would be the beginning of its end.Disney releases another box office bomb; 'Wish' cursed with some of the worst reviews the House of Mouse has ever received
The Walt Disney Company marked its 100th anniversary with yet another box office bomb. "Wish," which reportedly cost between $175 million and $200 million to produce, drew a paltry $19.5 million domestically over the weekend.
Box office analysts figured the film would bring in at least $45 million in its first five days, but it failed to crack $32 million, reported CNBC.
By way of contrast, "Frozen 2" brought in over $125 million over the same five-day period in 2019.
As of Monday, "Wish" had earned a worldwide total of $48.9 million.
The animated picture's abysmal opening week bookends a year of similar flops, including "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," "The Little Mermaid" remake, "The Marvels," and "Haunted Mansion."
While continuing the trend of ostensibly cursed releases, "Wish" nevertheless managed to outperform Disney's last November flop, "Strange World" — a work of climate alarmist agitprop featuring the studio's first openly gay on-screen teen. "Strange World," which only brought in $11.9 million over a post-pandemic Thanksgiving weekend, reportedly amounted to a loss for Disney of $197.4 million.
"Wish" will, however, still register as one of Disney's worst opening weekends in modern times.
Not only is "Wish" ostensibly a costly mistake but widely disliked.
The film ranks 64th out Disney's 73 animated theatrical movies according to Rotten Tomatoes, whereon "Wish" presently has a 49% rating.
Kevin Maher of the Times (U.K.) wrote, "Just like The Marvels, Wish is an emotionally inert and personality-free movie that appears to have been assembled from the outside in."
Maher appears to have been referencing "Wish" director Jennifer Lee's June suggestion to the Guardian that "[w]hen you manage characters from outside in, they don't resonate. And if it's not authentic, no one comes."
Wendy Ide of the Observer called the film a "grimly cynical marketing exercise wrapped in the sparkly cloak of an escapist animated fairytale."
Although critics have suggested the film is devoid of personality, sincerity and emotional stimuli, Deadline suggested the film's under-performance is actually the result of a poorly conceived trailer that failed to provide a clear sense of what the film was about, promising only another "plug-and-play princess movie" with an unclear narrative hook.
Blaze News previously reported that ahead of the film's release, the Walt Disney Company filed its annual financial report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, detailing both its woke bona fides and the price it has paid for its involvement in culture wars.
"We face risks relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment, travel and consumer products, which impact demand for our entertainment offerings and products and the profitability of any of our business," said the SEC filing. "Our businesses create entertainment, travel and consumer products whose success depends substantially on consumer tastes and preferences that change in often unpredictable ways."
The company indicated that this "misalignment" with customers has impacted its various products and services as well as its reputation.
CEO Bob Iger told investors in September that Disney would work to "quiet the noise" in the culture war, reported the New York Post. However, it appears the damage already done may be irreversible. After all, the company has both made its activist position on various sensitive issues extremely clear in recent years and demonstrated its contempt for the democratic will of the American people, throwing around its weight in hopes of undoing legislative efforts to protect children and shore up parental rights.
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