Disney is now the Bud Light of the entertainment world. The mega company, once beloved for timeless characters and films passed down from grandparents to grandchildren, is now a deeply divisive company. And the numbers back it up.
The Daily Wire got a peek at a new Rasmussen Reports survey that revealed a strong ideological divide in how consumers now see the company.
Just over 60 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of Disney, including 35 percent who say they have a “very unfavorable” opinion, the survey conducted by Rasmussen in late September found. The results are starkly divided by political identity. While among Republicans only 32 percent have a favorable view and 61 percent have an unfavorable view, for Democrats the results are almost exactly the opposite — 61 percent of Democrats view Disney favorably and just 29 percent unfavorably.
Blame Disney’s very public fight with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of the most popular GOP figures in the country.
More importantly, Disney’s aggressive push for woke diversity, including the addition of LGBTQ characters in shows aimed at youngsters, alienated more than a few right-leaning consumers. Those patrons aren’t necessarily against diverse characters, but they resist children’s programming featuring non-binary and trans characters.
Young minds may struggle to process them, and parents prefer to introduce their children to apolitical, asexual programming during their formative years.
An optimistic look at those poll numbers appear to balance themselves out. Disney is losing conservatives but gaining liberals.
Not exactly.
Disney needs as many customers as possible, Left and Right, conservative and liberal, to succeed. The company’s mainstream content offerings won’t succeed without a wide swath of viewers, over and again.
Movies like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Haunted Mansion” and “The Creator” (all owned by Disney, Inc.) failed at the box office by not attracting a large enough audience base.
This year’s “The Little Mermaid” scored big in America (nearly $300 million) but less than the company’s previous live-action update, “Aladdin” ($355 million).
Were some stateside viewers chased away by Disney’s hard-Left politics? Perhaps. If not, the next Disney products could be impacted that way.
The company’s streaming platform, Disney+, is similarly losing subscribers and revenue.
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.
The Daily Wire noted Disney’s woke agenda is partly to blame.
The biggest example? The upcoming, live-action “Snow White” reboot. Not only does the film ditch the “seven dwarfs” the film’s star actively dislikes the source material.
Disney’s upcoming live-action “Snow White” remake looks like another disaster in the making. Rachel Zegler, the actress playing Snow White, has stressed that the cartoon is utterly unacceptable by today’s standards, and this version will correct the original’s “issues.” pic.twitter.com/xkp8MrkaP9
— Lauren Chen (@TheLaurenChen) September 27, 2023
Social media has been on fire with users mocking Zegler’s curious take on the property.
Some entertainment content can thrive by alienating half the country. Late-night TV shows do just that, insulting conservatives and playing comic footsie with progressives. That venerable landscape is suffering, though, with declining ratings and revenue figures.
For now, the shows can go on without worrying the lights will get shut off anytime soon.
Can the same be said of Team Disney?
Returing CEO Bob Iger publicly vowed to cool the company’s culture war battles, but there’s little evidence Disney is doing anything of the kind.
