Once a powerhouse in the family entertainment industry, Disney has fallen out of favor with many Americans over its embrace of a leftist social ideology.
This has played out publicly in the ongoing dispute between Walt Disney World and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — and evidence of the trend also seems to be apparent in the financial losses the company has suffered due to a series of widely panned theatrical releases.
On average, the Walt Disney Company has lost more than $100 million on each of its last eight major films for a total of just under $900 million in total, according to a film industry analyst known as Valliant Renegade. That series of flops includes a number of films targeted for their inclusion of so-called “woke” themes and characters.
Among them is “Lightyear,” which features a same-sex kiss, a live-action “The Little Mermaid” reboot starring a Black leading actress, and “Elemental,” which introduces Disney’s first non-binary character.
All told, the last eight Disney films cost $2.75 billion — and brought in just $1.86 billion in revenue.
Of course, Disney’s financial troubles were common knowledge long before news of the staggering box office losses surfaced.
In November, former Disney CEO Bob Iger returned to helm the beleaguered corporation upon Bob Chapek’s departure. He almost immediately announced a series of cost-cutting steps as part of his “strategic restructuring” plan.
Earlier this year, Iger confirmed that 7,000 employees would lose their jobs in order to help the company achieve its goal of trimming $5.5 billion from the budget.
Aside from the theatrical losses sustained in its recent string of films, Valliant Renegade noted that Disney also appears to have missed out on some of the marketing and licensing revenue on which it used to rely after a film’s release.
All Disney had to do was make animated movies without political agendas for families to enjoy. Look at freaking Super Mario Brothers, it just made a billion dollars this summer as an animated movie with zero politics. Yet @RobertIger would rather feud with @GovRonDeSantis &…
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) June 19, 2023
“So not only do we need to consider how much money Disney has lost at the box office, we also need to consider how much money Disney has lost in economic-opportunity costs,” he asserted. “You see, that’s how much money they could have made had they actually taken these films and licensed them to Netflix, or Amazon Prime, or even similar to what Universal does with a split Pay 1 window.”
