Disney, our favorite left-wing corporate punching bag, is having a(nother) bad month. The company just reported fiscal fourth-quarter losses of a cool $710 million.
Don’t worry, I’m sure its new woke live-action version of “Snow White” will fix things. Let’s see what the new Snow White, the outspoken Hispanic feminista Rachel Zegler has to say about the new movie that will save Disney from disaster.
“It’s no longer 1937,” Zegler said. “She’s not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love. She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.”
Sounds like President Snow White’s been on Tinder too long!
Well, at least there will be those cute little dwarves, right? Everyone loves shawties in funny outfits! Sleepy, Dopey, Doc — kids love those guys! Unfortunately, Disney may be falling short here. The New York Post reports, “Disney’s live action ‘Snow White’ under fire for replacing seven dwarfs with ‘magical creatures’ of all sizes, genders.”
Just what every little girl loves: a bunch of weird grown-ups dressed like homeless Antifa junkies, sharing a home with a 14-year-old princess. “Snow White and the Non-binary Polycule House.” You know, for kids! Excuse me while I short Disney stock.
At this point, we must anticipate that the upcoming live-action version of “Rapunzel” will be an R-rated gritty reboot starring rapper Ice Spice and her orange afro. After all, who says Rapunzel needs to have long, blonde Becky hair? Time to get with the times, Grandpa.
Disney Plus Gets Sus
It seems most of the bleeding is coming from its streaming platform, Disney Plus. “Disney’s streaming operation lost $512 million in the most recent quarter, the company said, bringing total streaming losses since 2019, when Disney+ was introduced, to more than $11 billion. Disney+ lost roughly 11.7 million subscribers worldwide in the three months that ended July 1, for a new total of 146.1 million.”
Are you telling me no one wants to subscribe to Disney Plus to watch yet another beloved fairy tale slaughtered and worn as a skin suit by corporate harpies?
Nearly 12 million subscribers canceling in three months seems like a lot, especially because Disney Plus is not exactly a luxury product. In economic hard times, Disney Plus is still the most affordable Disney experience a family can indulge in. It’s not a cruise or a week at Disney World or even four tickets to “The Little Mermaid.”
Because it’s the entry-level product, Disney Plus is the animatronic canary in the coal mine. If you have kids at home and they like Disney stuff, eight bucks a month for the cheapest tier is an OK deal, especially if you have kids who want to watch their favorite movie every single day. I was happy to subscribe when my kids were obsessed with “Star Wars,” “Moana,” and “Frozen 2.”
But something changed in the last few years. There is no longer a single new movie or show on Disney Plus they want to watch. My kids are over “Star Wars” and “Moana” and “Frozen 2” — and they utterly ignore the new movies. The live-action remakes especially leave them cold. None of them wanted to see the reboots of “The Lion King” or “Beauty and the Beast.” My 7-year-old daughter did not even see “The Little Mermaid” in the theater.
Pixar movies used to be events in my house. I have seen “Cars” and “Toy Story” approximately 75 billion times. Buzz Lightyear was like my fourth son; my toddler wore Buzz jammies every night for three years. None of them, especially my Buzz fanatic, wanted to see the giant stinking turd that was “Lightyear.”
I didn’t go to business school, but I seem to remember hearing that when demand goes down, prices get slashed. Instead, the smart Disney execs with Wharton degrees decided to raise prices instead!
“The monthly price for access to an ad-free version of Disney+ rose to $11 in December, from $8. Another hefty price increase is on the way. Starting on Oct. 12, the ad-free version will cost $14, Disney said. Hulu, which is also controlled by Disney, will begin charging $18 for ad-free access, up from $15.”
Strangely, none of the news stories I read mention the glaring, obvious reasons why Disney Plus is no longer a must-have by Disney’s core audience: families with children.
It’s very simple. Disney has made the purposeful decision to stop making content all kids and parents enjoy. Millennials might watch a new movie once. Little girls watch the original “Little Mermaid” animated movie a dozen times.
But Disney is unbothered by the rebellion among former Disney loyalists. To prove where its new allegiance lies, it even gave Minnie Mouse, iconic spokeswoman for the brand worldwide, the Bud Light treatment: “Disney recently partnered with an influencer who identifies as gender-fluid for a clothing ad, showing followers on TikTok how to dress like Minnie Mouse.”
What 5-year-old girl doesn’t want a grown man in a petticoat to show her how to get dressed?
The Vanishing of a Generation
The reason for the decline, however, goes far beyond bad content. Disney Plus, after all, still carries all the classics that made the company into the juggernaut it became. You can still watch the originals of all the princess movies and experience authentic children’s entertainment, albeit with content warnings on everything telling you these old movies are full of “harmful stereotypes” and “outdated themes.”
The reason for the decline, and why its subscribers are not coming back, is that they were never born. Disney’s streaming profits are drying up because our newborn population is.
Plummeting birth rates in the United States have essentially wiped out huge numbers of potential Disney Plus watchers. Their parents just never bothered to create them. Worse, Disney movies — and its feminist, pro-abortion, girlboss executives and princess stars — actively encourage women not to become mothers. Snow White is not allowed to fall in love and marry the prince — if she did, she might not get to run for Senate, or even live her dreams as a mid-level marketing manager in Disney Consumer Products.
Which is, of course, why Disney has clumsily attempted to rebrand itself for “Disney Adults,” the thirty-something childless millennials who are happy to spend their disposable (child-free!) income on park tickets, rainbow Mouse ears, and Disney Plus streaming services. All these new Disney movies are now targeting this demographic — which, while sizeable now, is obviously (see second-quarter losses) not going to be enough to close the gap. They don’t make Mouse ears in cat sizes. (Yet!) Crucially, these people are not going to have anyone to pass along their love of the Disney brand to.
Disney is suffering from a problem it helped engineer. Classic princess movies used to inspire young girls to want to find their prince and get married one day. All those traditional and therefore bad messages have been “updated” to “reflect the world we live in now,” of course. Welcome to the dystopian, child-unfriendly world Disney helped create. It made this childless bed, and now we all have to lie in it.
The Child Stats website tells the tragic tale in a few stark charts. In 1965, the percentage of the U.S. population under 17 was about 37 percent. In 2023, it fell to roughly 22 percent of the population. And the younger you go, the lower the number gets.
Disney can make all the live-action princess reboots it wants. But the one thing it can’t make is a live human child. Yet.
