The Walt Disney Co. has seen another massively expensive film tank at the box office after adding a woke cultural theme.
The animated movie “Strange World” is the first offered by the ‘family-friendly’ entertainment giant to feature an openly gay relationship.
The company enlisted a number of high-profile Hollywood celebrities for voice roles, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Gabrielle Union, Lucy Liu, and Dennis Quaid, and released the film over the extended Thanksgiving weekend, when studios tend to release their most anticipated films.
But by any measure, the film bombed after Disney also chose not to release the film in at least 20 countries “where its LGBTQ+ content would have very likely forced demands for edits,” according to Deadline.
The Blaze added:
The movie stars 27-year-old Jaboukie Young-White – who is best known for being a correspondent on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.” Young-White voices a character named “Jaeger” – a gay 16-year-old who has a “boy crush” on another boy named “Daizo.”
Variety reported: “Walt Disney screened three sequences from ‘Strange World.’ In the first, Ethan flirts with heartthrob Diazo while friends from school look on, teasing in a friendly and warm-hearted way. Much to Ethan’s chagrin, his dad Searcher soon joins in, embarrassing his son with an overeager show of acceptance.”
“After a rocky $4.2 million opening day on Wednesday, the film collected $2.4 million from 4,174 North American theaters on Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday,” according to Variety. “With its two-day total at $6.7 million, weekend estimates for ‘Strange World’ have been revised slightly. Now, the movie is expected to end the five-day frame with roughly $26 million, which is still a dismal result given its $180 million production budget.”
The outlet continued: “To compare, Disney’s musical fantasy ‘Encanto’ collected $40.3 million over the extended holiday frame in 2021. And box office watchers were kinder when it came to assessing those ticket sales because, at the time, young kids were still getting vaccinated for the first time.”
“Strange World” is the lowest-rated Disney movie in 31 years, and it comes as the company sacked its former ‘woke’ CEO, Bob Chapek, and brought back retired former CEO Bob Iger, after Chapek’s tenure was marred by falling stock values, bleeding profits, and an insane pivot to ‘woke’ left-wing content that alienated core audiences.
“We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic,” Disney Chairman Susan Arnold said in a statement, the Daily Wire reported.
“The company was also criticized for featuring a lesbian kiss in kids’ movie ‘Lightyear,’ showing a transgender man purchasing tampons in a TV series, and emphatically embracing the trend of Environmental, Social, and Governance, a strategy that courts investors by promoting a host of woke values within the corporate structure,” the outlet said.
The outlet added: “Disney stock has fallen over 40% over the last year amid an ailing economy. It’s woes have been blamed on a series of decisions that have alienated its family-minded and in many cases, conservative, customer base. The company clashed bitterly with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over a law that prohibits public schools from teaching kids below the fourth grade about sexual orientation and radical gender theory.”
