Puck’s Matt Belloni has a very interesting piece up about Disney CEO Bob Iger’s $15 million “blood sacrifice” to Donald Trump after ABC News decided to, surprisingly, settle Trump’s defamation litigation against the network. Disney additionally released a statement expressing “regret” for anchor George Stephanopoulos’ on-air claim that Trump was found liable in court for “rape.”
Belloni’s piece insinuates that such a deal could have only been maneuvered with Iger’s consent, and that we might be entering a new era at Disney, one where the company’s social activism gets tampered down for a more populist approach to creative content.
The reason why I’m reporting about this is because of a THR piece, published this afternoon, that’s been making some waves. The report confirms that Pixar removed a transgender character’s storyline from their upcoming “Win or Lose.” You should take a look at the online outrage that’s happening over this (actually, maybe you shouldn’t).
A spokesperson for Disney confirmed that the “Win or Lose” story arc was removed and provided the following statement:
When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline
Don’t be surprised if THR’s intel came from a few disgruntled Pixar creatives who were no doubt irked by the decision to remove the trans storyline.
It’s not like Iger didn’t warn us beforehand about the changes that would come at Disney. Last year, he stunned many by saying that Disney would start focusing on “entertaining” and “not messages” in their future films.
Iger blamed the creators at Disney for losing sight of what their jobs should be — he explained that it got worse when he left as CEO/Chairman. In his own words, he stated that the mantra going forward would be “entertain first, not messages” and that “messages” shouldn’t be forced upon an audience.
Earlier in the year, Iger doubled down on his previous comments, hinting that he wanted to “quiet things down” at Disney “after years of culture wars.” This seemed to be in reference to the company having been accused, many times, of promoting a “woke agenda” in their movies.
With all that said, is it any coincidence that, just a few days ago, two major outlets, The New York Times and The Telegraph, proclaimed an end to the “awkward diversity era” in Hollywood? The Telegraph’s headline, “Hollywood’s great unwokening has been unleashed.”