How do you replace the lead actress in a movie?
Well, the knuckleheads at the flop factory we know as DEIsney have been wargaming how to reduce the presence of the off-putting, toxic Rachel Ziegler.
Their solution? They're writing in a lot of flashback sequences in which a younger, less hostile and alienating actress places a child Snow White.
They're hoping that if you like the Child Snow White, that will carry over and you'll also like the unlikeable adult Snow White.
The source claims that Disney has hired a young actress to play Snow White as a child. The idea is to cut time out of Zegler's performance, show Snow White as a cute little kid, and soften the character with flashbacks and/or major origin story portion at the beginning of the film. Of course, edits have not begun for these scenes as we believe they're not shot yet, so things could change. That said, if they do go forward with significant cutaways to Snow White as a child, this is a deviation from the original. And, wouldn't you know it, after receiving this information last week, it turns out there are sites reporting that Disney has, indeed, hired a young actress to take the role. And that would mean that they're actively inserting a new childhood-portion of the movie that wasn't originally planned!
The new actress, Emilia Faucher, is cute. Is she cute enough to take the hard edges off of woke blowhard Rachel Ziegler? We'll see.
WDW_Pro says that the "Snow White" which is depicted in the film as it currently stands is of a "socialist revolutionary" leading a political revolution against... well I'm going to assume the Patriarchy, but I don't know. (I think your Expectations about the witch will be Subverted, and she'll be a fellow victim of the Patriarchy.)
Over the weekend, Nelson Peltz began his war to take command of the Bob Iger Company and turn it back into the Walt Disney Company.
"We will seek the support of shareholders for meaningful change in the Board's composition. It is time to 'Restore the Magic' at Disney."
To "restore the magic," Trian Partners called on Disney to target "Netflix-like margins" of 15% to 20%, complete a CEO succession plan and align management pay with performance.
Peltz made an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk On The Street" Thursday morning immediately after the proxy filing was released and further explained his firm's push for changes at Disney.
"We love Disney and it saddens me that the board didn't welcome me because our goal is just to work with them ... and to help them make the company better," Peltz said on the show.
"This board, from Bob [Iger] to every independent director, has underperformed the S&P on every measure: one year, three years, five years, 10 years."
This is Peltz's second proxy battle with Disney in the past two years. The activist investor told CNBC the board promised him changes last year and then "things got worse," so he can't continue to give them opportunities.
"Activist" doesn't mean here "political activist." It means a shareholder who is not content to be passive: an activist investor wants to change direction of the company.
Peltz also suggested Iger shouldn't have been paid nearly as much as he was in 2023 because company earnings were down, the stock price was down and "everything went bad."
Reports from this week showed the Disney CEO's compensation more than doubled last year to $31.6 million. He was paid a base salary of $865,385, stock awards worth $16.1 million, stock option awards of $10 million, performance-based compensation of $2.1 million and $2.48 million in other compensation.
"I don't understand what this board is doing. I don't know what they're there for other than friends of Bob [Iger]," Peltz said.
The RestoreTheMagic.com website is back up, and leads with DEIsney's woeful stock performance compared to the S&P and to other media companies.
Note the other media companies here are companies DEIsney has specifically chosen to compare itself to.
Trian and Peltz are also hammering the fact that Bob Iger and his handpicked yesmen (and yeswomen!!! Yeswomeon of Color! YOCs!!!) barely own any stock, so of course they are "misaligned with shareholder interests." They keep giving themselves big bonuses, no matter how far the share price falls. What do they care if the price falls another 50%? They're not stupid enough to heavily invest in the shithole company they control.
DEIsney just released Soul into the theaters, which had not previously been in the theaters due to covid, but instead premiered on DEIsney Plus. DEIsney wanted to prove they still had the magic, and expected the film would be appreciated by audiences during this slow January.
It made... a little more than half a million dollars.
DEIsney had hoped it would make $2 million.
Soul, a feature-length animated film starring a black character, was released into 1,350 theaters over the Martin Luther King Jr. four-day holiday weekend and grossed exactly -- get ready to laugh -- $557,000.
Thats about 25 percent of the projected two million, which makes my heart sing.
On Friday, Soul grossed a measly $99 per theater.
By the way, the Restore the Magic twitter account got a big boost from Elon Musk: