Disney’s ‘Strange World’ Tanks, Indicates Woke Film Movement Is Failing
Read Time: 2 Minutes 51 Seconds
The Walt Disney Corporation’s move to serve the LGBTQ and woke crowd is apparently beginning to backfire on the entertainment giant.
“Strange World,” a controversial film that many have panned because of its blatant homosexual messaging, bombed at the box office in its opening weekend last weekend, indicating that Disney’s agenda to indoctrinate children to the LGBTQ movement is failing.
CBN News reported that “Strange World” opened in 4,174 locations last Wednesday. On Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the film earned only $5.2 million. Variety.com reported that the movie made $18.6 million over the entire weekend and said the movie was expected to earn between $30 to $40 million between Wednesday and Sunday.
“Strange World” carried a reported $180 million budget. Variety.com reported that the film is projected to lose $100 million in its theatrical run and will need $360 million just to break even.
The film features a gay teen romance, the first time in Disney’s history that it promoted such a relationship. Disney’s “Lightyear,” which also made a lackluster theatrical run earlier this year, had previously cut a scene with two same-sex characters kissing, but Disney reinserted the scene after Florida passed the Parental Rights in Education law earlier this year.
After the law was passed, then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek pledged that Disney would become a “better ally” for the LGBTQ community. He was recently fired from his position and replaced by Bob Iger, who returns to the role he left in 2020.
Iger is coming out of retirement to replace his successor in a move that shocked industry observers.
CBNNews.com reported that many conservatives have panned the expression, “Get Woke, Go Broke,” expressing the view that corporations that embrace political correctness of cave to the demands of social justice activists will “suffer financially as a result.”
Adam Holz, director of Focus on the Family’s “Plugged in,” previously said that Disney’s catering to the LGBTQ agenda and its sexualization of animated films has raised the ire of many parents who simply aren’t going to take it anymore.
“There are parents saying, ‘Wait a minute, why do we have to import a sexual message into kids’ programming?'” Holz told CBNNews.com. “And so even if we talk beyond this specific LGBT agenda, I think there’s a concern that why does everything have to be sexualized?
“It is possible to just have entertainment that’s innocent, that leaves that for later and doesn’t bring that into everything we’re doing.”
One reviewer tweeted, “”First Lightyear and now Strange World. Disney and Pixar releasing woke flops, one after the other. How many box office bombs before Disney learns?”
Conservative political analyst Ben Shapiro tweeted before the opening of the movie, “As Disney begins pushing ‘Strange World’ for next week’s release, here’s the reminder that their ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda’ to target kids is ongoing. It’s a part of the plot of this movie, just as it was with ‘Lightyear.’ Your kids, your choice.”
One parent said on Twitter that the leaders at Disney seem to have forgotten who its paying customers are. Shortly after the movie began, his son asked to depart the theater.
“Took the kids to the movies today to watch a Disney cartoon called ‘Strange World,'” Patrick Bet-David tweeted. “Within 10 minutes of the movie, my 10-year-old son said ‘Dad, I have no desire to watch this movie. Can we leave?’ We left.”
Even the Seattle Times, in one of the most woke cities in America, agreed.
“The uneasy marriage of clunky psychodrama and overwrought special effects along with the fact that none of these characters are particularly likable make ‘Strange World’ a chore to sit through,” Soren Andersen wrote.
CBNNews.com reported that Disney’s stocks dropped lower than expected during the fourth quarter of 2022 and have sunk more than 40% this year. Shares hit a 20-year-low after the fourth-quarter report. {eoa}
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Shawn A. Akers is the online editor at Charisma Media.
