Disney Headlines for March 5th, 2023
This was a history-making week at Walt Disney World, as legislation permanently altered the (former) Reedy Creek Improvement District.
Meanwhile, Quantumania has already subsided, a potential Bob Iger successor has made some big moves, and Disney Channel fans got some warm fuzzies.
We’ve got a serious batch of Disney Headlines this week.
Reedy Creek Changes Names
On Monday, Florida’s governor officially signed the legislation to alter the former Reedy Creek Improvement District.
While Disney may continue to use the name on legal documents for up to two more years, this entity no longer exists.
In its place, Florida has forcibly renamed this entity as the Central Florida Tourism District.
Initially, Florida lawmakers flew off the handle a bit last year when they attempted to dissolve Reedy Creek in its entirety.
Once the money people got involved, cooler heads prevailed. Politicians recognized that they’d be handing Disney $1 billion in such a move.
Meanwhile, residents of multiple counties in Central Florida would have paid substantially higher taxes virtually overnight to make up the billion-dollar shortfall.
Eventually, lawmakers settled for this kind of half-measure that slaps The Walt Disney Company on the wrist for taking a stance against the Don’t Say Gay bill.
The legality of this move has been in question since day one, but internal polling informed Disney that it should take the L here, at least in the short term.
Bad Options Abound
Disney can always sue later if the situation turns even more dystopian. I cannot rule out that possibility, either.
While Disney wants this entire affair to blow over, Florida politicians have pounced on this opportunity to do the whole Helen Lovejoy “Won’t someone please think of the children!” schtick.
That’s really the Headline here. Florida’s governor now claims the authority to determine the board members for the CFTOD.
Let’s just say that he chose some of the most inflammatory people possible, including a co-author of the Don’t Say Gay bill.
A politician only does this when they intend to continue pressing an issue.
Not coincidentally, the governor indicated that he may yet expand the Don’t Say Gay bill.
That move would place Bob Iger in a terrible position. After he left Disney, Iger stated that he would have loudly disavowed the Don’t Say Gay bill.
Iger criticized his successor, Bob Chapek, for failing to do the same.
Now, Iger could feasibly find himself in the same no-win scenario that Chapek experienced.
Disney faces the same dilemma that the NFL did in 2017 when the sitting POTUS attacked the sport of football on social issues.
Now, Disney is the new NFL, and its chief critic will spend the next year running for office at the company’s expense.
You should expect some RIDICULOUS, Headline-grabbing board meetings for the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.
This one ain’t going away, folks.
A Healing of Sorts
Since everyone hates thinking about Reedy Creek for various reasons, let’s switch to a more positive Headline from this past week.
Did you see the news that Selena Gomez just surpassed Kylie Jenner as the most followed female on Instagram?
That’s not me saying that. It’s the Guinness Book of World Records! Remarkably, Gomez has surpassed 385 million followers!
The star of Only Murders in the Building should cross 400 million by the summer, if not much sooner.
That’s not even the Headline, though! Instead, Gomez recently returned to her roots when she appeared on the Wizards of Waverly Place rewatch podcast.
Gomez joined her former co-stars on the series, which she anchored.
Jennifer Stone and David DeLuise had invited her to appear. Stone played the best friend of Gomez’s character on the show while DeLuise portrayed her father.
Gomez, an extreme forthright and transparent celebrity, confessed that she felt bad that she hadn’t remained in close contact with them.
The actress described her time on Wizards of Waverly Place as the happiest of her life and got a lot off her chest about things she felt she could have done better.
You can watch the entire podcast interview here:
Fans of this show and the generation of Disney Channel it represents will love this comfortable bit of nostalgia. It’s the kind of positivity that exemplifies the Disney brand.
Miscellaneous Headlines
The final results aren’t in quite yet, but we can already skip to the end of the page.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania won’t reach the heights Disney had hoped.
On Tuesday, February 28th, the Marvel movie beat Cocaine Bear by about $70,000 at the box office. That’s less than 7,000 tickets separating the films.
To be fair, we’d all expect a bear to destroy an ant or even a man with ant-based superpowers.
Still, jokes aside, Marvel has banked the next three years of the MCU on Kang the Conqueror. While this character has been well-received, the movie hasn’t.
Ant-Man 3 now holds the unfortunate distinction of having the worst Cinemascore AND the largest second-weekend drop in MCU history.
As I mentioned in MarvelBlog News this past week, the blame game has already started.
Several virtual special effects workers have gone public with the fact that Marvel prioritized Black Panther: Wakanda Forever over Quantumania…and it shows.
Alarmingly, Quantumania has flat-out bombed in some international markets, especially China. So, it has some work to do to match Ant-Man 2’s global take of $623 million.
A month ago, that total seemed like a foregone conclusion. MickeyBlog’s Justin Hermes recently asked whether Disney has a Marvel problem.
I wouldn’t describe the past year of results as problematic, but Quantumania’s performance definitely is.
Finally, we should discuss Dana Walden’s big week. I recently described her as one of the two likeliest successors to Iger.
The television guru just made her big move by establishing new leadership under her.
One of her promoted workers is John Landgraf, the creative genius from FX. That’s a strong choice.
Walden also earned a spot on the President’s Export Council, an incredible honor for anyone. Dana Walden had a good week. She really could become Disney CEO.
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Feature Photo: Disney