The problems for Disney’s CEO keep piling up with no end in sight.
His hopes of turning things around are becoming bleak.
And Disney’s CEO was sick to his stomach after he got this bad news about going woke.
Disney hid a staggering loss on its woke Star Wars series
Disney’s movie and TV divisions used to be one of the most reliable producers of hits in Hollywood.
The company’s movies and shows delighted fans of all ages with its family-friendly content and great storytelling.
But Disney decided to inject a woke political message into its movies by inserting needless LGBTQ messages into its content.
The once mighty Star Wars franchise has been run into the ground after Disney bought it from creator George Lucas in 2012.
Disney’s latest Star Wars series The Acolyte could go down as one of the most expensive failures in TV history.
The show’s creator Leslye Headland said it was her mission with the series to make sure the LGBTQ community was well represented in the Star Wars universe.
She vowed that it would be the “gayest Star Wars” ever and the beloved R2D2 droid would be a lesbian.
The discussion leading into the show was not about the characters or the stories.
All the conversation around the series centered on how gay it was going to be.
Predictably, this was not a strategy for success.
The Acolyte was canceled after one eight-episode season.
Critics panned the show and audiences ignored it, giving it terrible views on the Disney+ streaming service.
Disney revealed that the series cost $180 million.
But that number hid the actual cost of The Acolyte through creative Hollywood accounting practices.
The news site That Park Place discovered tax documents that were filed in the United Kingdom that listed the series cost as a stunning $231 million.
Disney spent more than one-quarter of a billion dollars on a series that bombed with audiences.
That is nearly $29 million an episode.
Disney announces more layoffs
Shares of Disney stock are down more than 53% from its high of nearly $200 a share in March 2021.
The company’s streaming business led by Disney+ made a modest profit of $47 million for the first time in the third quarter of 2024.
It lost more than $500 million earlier this year.
Disney’s movie business has struggled with box office bombs in recent years like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Haunted Mansion, and The Marvels.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe movies are no longer surefire hits after the franchise focused on putting more female superheroes front and center.
Disney announced another round of layoffs with 300 people in its legal, finance, human resources, and communications departments let go.
“We continually evaluate ways to invest in our businesses and more effectively manage our resources and costs to fuel the state-of-the-art creativity and innovation that consumers value and expect from Disney,” a Disney spokesperson told Deadline. “As part of this ongoing optimization work, we have been reviewing the cost structure for our corporate-level functions and have determined there are ways for them to operate more efficiently.”
This comes after layoffs at Disney’s Pixar movie division and in its TV division.
Disney refused to learn from box office failures and pivot away from woke content.
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this story.
