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      Disney Is a Language. Do We Still Speak It?

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      President Dwight D. Eisenhower once praised Walt Disney for his “genius as a creator of folklore.” When Disney died in 1966, the line made it into his obituary, evidence of its accuracy. Folklore, defined broadly, is an oral tradition that stretches across generations. It tells people who they are, how they got here and how they should live in the future. The company Disney created appointed itself keeper of these traditions for Americans, spinning up fresh tales and (more often) deftly repackaging old ones to appeal to a new century.It started with Mickey Mouse, but as his company turns 100, Disney’s legacy — advanced in hundreds of films and shorts and shows, mass-produced tie-in merchandise, marvelous technical advancements, gargantuan theme parks around the world — was the production of a modern shared language, a set of reference points instantly recognizable to almost everyone, and an encouragement to dream out loud about a utopian future. Walt Disney was a man who gazed backward and forward: speaking at the opening of Disneyland in 1955, he proclaimed: “Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future.” But what happens when that promise is broken and the reference points are siloed? When his company struggles at the box office like a regular studio and faces cultural headwinds like any artist?Walt Disney at the opening of Disneyland, extolling the hope of a brighter tomorrow.USC Libraries/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDisney told stories of folk heroes (Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan), princes and princesses, and even, occasionally, a mouse, all while leading the pack on ever-shifting technologies. (He was, among other things, the first major movie producer to make a TV show.) A sense of optimism ruled Disney’s ethos, built on homemade mythologies. The lessons of his stories were simple, uplifting and distinctly American: believe in yourself, believe in your dreams, don’t let anyone make you feel bad for being you, be your own hero and, most of all, don’t be afraid to wish upon a star. Fairy tales and legends are often disquieting, but once cast in a Disney light they became soft and sweet, their darker and less comforting lessons re-engineered to fit the Disney ideal. It was a distinctly postwar vision of the world.And we ate it up, and we exported it, and we wanted to be part of it, too. “One of the most astounding exhibitions of popular devotion came in the wake of Mr. Disney’s films about Davy Crockett,” Disney’s obituary explained, referring to a live-action 1950s shows about the frontiersman. “In a matter of months, youngsters all over the country who would balk at wearing a hat in winter were adorned in coonskin caps in midsummer.”The coonskin caps were a harbinger of things to come. Halloween would be dominated by princesses and mermaids. Bedsheets and pajamas would be printed with lions and mopey donkeys. Adults would plan weddings at a magical kingdom in Florida. Audiences around the world would join in the legends. Once-closed countries like China would eventually open their doors, leading the company — aware that success in this new market meant fast-tracking children’s introduction to Mickey, Ariel and Buzz Lightyear — to open English-language schools using their characters and stories as the teaching tools. History would show that Eisenhower was onto something when he referred to Disney as a creator, not just a reteller, of folklore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      What ‘Pocahontas’ Tells Us About Disney, for Better and Worse

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      The animated tale was both controversial and an Oscar-winning box office hit. It’s also one of the rare films from that era that the company isn’t eager to remake.Disney’s animated achievements — certain ones — are imprinted on our brains, in part because the company reminds us about them seemingly nonstop. Fresh from the Disney vault! Restored to its original glory!“Wish,” which arrived last month as part of Disney’s centennial self-celebration, is a collection of callbacks to classics like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937), “Sleeping Beauty” (1959), “The Little Mermaid” (1989) and “The Lion King” (1994). Disney theme parks have recently unveiled attractions based on “Frozen” (2013) and “Moana” (2016), among others.But there are also films in Disney’s animated canon that the image-conscious company does not talk about much, and the reasons are usually obvious. Some were box office failures. A few of the older ones traffic in racist stereotypes.If we are going to look back at Disney’s history with animated movies, however, as the company has invited people to do with its 100th anniversary bash, the problem films should be part of the discussion. To wrestle with Disney and its legacy — the good and the bad, the past and the present — the misfires sometimes offer as much insight as the masterworks.Consider “Pocahontas.”Released in 1995 at a time when Walt Disney Animation Studios was experiencing a creative renaissance, “Pocahontas” pulls from history and legend to recount — sort of — the story of the real-life Native American girl who, in 1607, supposedly saved an English settler, John Smith, after he’d been taken as prisoner by her father’s tribe. The film won two Oscars (for song and score) and was celebrated by leading critics for its vibrant color palette and magical realism (a murmuration of autumn leaves, the advice-giving Grandmother Willow). Janet Maslin, reviewing the movie for The New York Times, called it a “landmark feat of animation.”“Pocahontas” also has some severe problems, starting with the title character. Disney depicted her not as a girl of about 11, as historians agree Pocahontas was at the time she interacted with Smith, but as an ultra-voluptuous young woman. Disney took other extreme liberties with the story, in particular inventing a romance between Pocahontas, who was voiced by Irene Bedard, and Smith (Mel Gibson). Disney higher-ups pressed the “Pocahontas” creative team to make it more like “Beauty and the Beast,” which had been a runaway hit at the box office — presto, a romance.The character was portrayed not as a young girl but as a voluptuous woman.Buena Vista Pictures/Disney, via Everett Collection“Disney made a lot of unfortunate decisions with this movie,” said Angela Aleiss, a film scholar whose books include “Hollywood’s Native Americans: Stories of Identity and Resistance.”“It should be a lesson,” she added of “Pocahontas,” which was directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg. “Why not let Indigenous people tell these stories?”Recent Disney films like the animated “Strange World,” with its gay teenage protagonist, have become cultural flash points. But “Pocahontas” prompted a full-blown fracas. Some people accused Disney of whitewashing history — for leaving out the fact, for instance, that Pocahontas died at 21, perhaps of smallpox, after being taken to London and paraded around as an example of a “civilized savage.” Others blasted “Pocahontas” for depicting some white settlers as bigoted plunderers (though historians would argue this was accurate). Some Native Americans winced at the ways in which the film perpetuated the Good Indian stereotype, which posits that worthy Native Americans were those who helped white immigrants. Psychologists complained that Disney’s rendering of the heroine gave girls yet another impossible body standard to live up to.For these reasons, “Pocahontas” lives in a netherworld at Disney.The company does not hide it. The movie is available on Disney+, and the character is designated an official Disney Princess. “Wish” contains a couple of subtle references to the film. But bring up “Pocahontas” at Disney headquarters, and people get visibly tense. The vibe is: Let’s please change the subject. A couple of years ago, Disney decided that “Pocahontas” would be one of the few animated hits that would not be remade as a live-action spectacle. Too fraught, especially in the social media era. (“Pocahontas” was very much a hit. It cost about $112 million in today’s dollars, and collected $707 million — less than the Disney movies that preceded it, but a lot of dough all the same.)Disney declined to comment for this article.Animation historians contend that “Pocahontas” is more important than most people realize — that the film’s challenges have obscured its true standing in Disney’s animated oeuvre.“Pocahontas,” for instance, “marked a new turn in Disney storytelling toward empowered heroines,” said Mindy Johnson, an animation scholar whose books include “Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation.” Johnson added, “Many credit this to ‘Mulan.’ But ‘Pocahontas’ paved the way.”Despite its invented romance, the film ends with Pocahontas spurning John Smith’s invitation to go with him to England. She chooses to stay with her tribe.“Pocahontas” was the first animated Disney film to focus on a woman of color. It was the first (and only) time that Disney made an animated movie about a real person. And in many ways, it was Disney’s first overt “issues” movie for children. Developed in the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, “Pocahontas” explored the idea that “if we don’t learn to live with one another, we will destroy ourselves,” as Peter Schneider, then Disney’s animation president, put it in “The Art of Pocahontas” by Stephen Rebello.“Environmental messages are equally present and so relevant, especially today,” Johnson said.Disney movies had always had a moral, but this went much further — and the film’s implicit political message freaked some people out: Disney is messing with our kids. The uproar helped push the company back toward lighter material, resulting in comedies like “The Emperor’s New Groove” and “Lilo & Stitch.”After “Beauty and the Beast” proved a hit, Disney executives pushed the “Pocahontas” filmmakers to make it romance.Buena Vista Pictures/Disney, via Everett CollectionA similar shift is going on right now at Disney. The company has become a political punching bag, partly because it has added openly gay, lesbian and queer characters to its animated movies. The emphasis on diversity in some of Disney’s live-action films, including “The Little Mermaid,” “The Marvels” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” has also led to fan complaints. Although Disney has also received positive feedback, the blowback — and poor ticket sales for some of the films in question — has prompted Disney to retrench.“Creators lost sight of what their No. 1 objective needed to be,” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said at the DealBook Summit last month. “We have to entertain first. It’s not about messages.”It should be noted that “Pocahontas” has plenty of fans. Some point to the clever, sweeping ways in which the film’s songs are visualized. Alan Menken (“The Little Mermaid”) and Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked”) wrote the music, which includes the Oscar-winning “Colors of the Wind,” sung by Judy Kuhn.“A graceful and well-intentioned entry in the Disney canon,” Sophie Gilbert wrote in a 2015 essay in The Atlantic that defended the film as progressive and feminist. (The magazine also published letters from readers who did not agree.)Hanay Geiogamah, a former director of the American Indian Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, was hired by Disney in the 1990s to consult on “Pocahontas” and its straight-to-video sequel, “Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World.” In a phone interview, he called working with Disney “a really positive experience,” noting that some of his concerns about authenticity (the depiction of dancing and ceremonies, for instance) led to prerelease changes in the film.“I understood why people were upset, and, at the time, I made my voice heard, too,” Geiogamah said. “But you have to remember, at the end of the day, this was a Disney animated fantasy. I was actually pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. Yes, there was a falsity at its core. But it also gave millions of young people a positive impression of Indian life. It wasn’t all battles and ugliness and harshness.”The many opinions are a reminder of how powerful the Disney brand is: People care — they really care.Affinity for the brand runs so deep that it can quickly recover when the company stumbles. Life in the Magic Kingdom goes on. Five months after “Pocahontas” arrived in theaters, tresses swinging, Disney released the first film from an experimental new animation company called Pixar. The movie was “Toy Story,” and the response was so rapturous that “Pocahontas” — and the fighting around it — started to fade into history. More

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      Studios Are Loosening Their Reluctance to Send Old Shows Back to Netflix

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      When building their own streaming companies, many entertainment studios ended lucrative licensing deals with Netflix. But they missed the money too much.For years, entertainment company executives happily licensed classic movies and television shows to Netflix. Both sides enjoyed the spoils: Netflix received popular content like “Friends” and Disney’s “Moana,” which satisfied its ever-growing subscriber base, and it sent bags of cash back to the companies.But around five years ago, executives realized they were “selling nuclear weapons technology” to a powerful rival, as Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, put it. Studios needed those same beloved movies and shows for the streaming services they were building from scratch, and fueling Netflix’s rise was only hurting them. The content spigots were, in large part, turned off.Then the harsh realities of streaming began to emerge.Confronting sizable debt burdens and the fact that most streaming services still don’t make money, studios like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have begun to soften their do-not-sell-to-Netflix stances. The companies are still holding back their most popular content — movies from the Disney-owned Star Wars and Marvel universes and blockbuster original series like HBO’s “Game of Thrones” aren’t going anywhere — but dozens of other films like “Dune” and “Prometheus” and series like “Young Sheldon” are being sent to the streaming behemoth in return for much-needed cash. And Netflix is once again benefiting.Ted Sarandos, one of Netflix’s co-chief executives, said at an investor conference last week that the “availability to license has opened up a lot more than it was in the past,” arguing that the studios’ earlier decision to hold back content was “unnatural.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Disney Rejected Her a Few Times. The ‘Wish’ Director Just Kept Trying.

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      After she was finally hired by the studio, Fawn Veerasunthorn worked her way up the ranks, and has applied that lesson of perseverance to her new film.At the turn of the century, a young medical student in Thailand mailed a handwritten letter to a Disney animator in Florida.The student, Fawn Veerasunthorn, had attended a guest lecture by this visual effects animator, Paitoon Ratanasirintrawoot, years earlier at her Bangkok high school (his alma mater). She’d since graduated and was miserable in her first year of med school. But, she wondered, might he have advice on how she could switch careers, move to the United States and follow in his footsteps at Disney?He wrote back with his email address and they struck up a correspondence, as he answered her questions, which ranged from “What is a portfolio?” and “Where did you go to college?” to “Do girls really work in animation?” and “Is this safe?”At the time, the animation industry in their home country was small. “Not many people from Thailand even have a dream of working in animation, let alone at Disney,” said Ratanasirintrawoot, who counts “The Lion King,” “Mulan” and “Lilo & Stitch” among his credits. “But she was really determined.”Spurred by that determination, Veerasunthorn dropped out of med school, moved across the Pacific for art school and pushed past multiple Disney rejections until she eventually got her foot in the door in 2011.She’s spent the past 12 years climbing the ranks of Walt Disney Animation Studios: serving as a story artist — visualizing and sketching out how a script will translate onscreen — on “Frozen,” “Moana” and “Zootopia,” and leading a team as the head of story on “Raya and the Last Dragon.”Now, Veerasunthorn is making her directorial debut alongside Chris Buck on “Wish” (in theaters), a tribute to the company’s legacy on it 100th anniversary.The musical fairy tale follows 17-year-old Asha (voiced by Ariana DeBose), who makes a wish to improve the plight of her people in Rosas, a fictional kingdom ruled by the tyrannical King Magnifico (Chris Pine).A scene from “Wish,” with Ariana DeBose voicing the 17-year-old Asha.Disney“Everyone keeps talking about, ‘Aren’t you stressed? It’s 100! How do you uphold that legacy?’” Veerasunthorn said. “But at some point, I felt like, ‘Oh, we can turn this energy into excitement.’”During an interview last month at the studio’s headquarters in Burbank, Calif., the 41-year-old director — wearing oversize magenta glasses and baby pink-accented sneakers — laughed frequently and verged on tears more than once. Not unlike the characters she brings to life, her energy was infectious.That capacity for emotion, said Disney Animation’s chief creative officer, Jennifer Lee, became a hallmark of Veerasunthorn’s storytelling early on.Lee first took note of Veerasunthorn when they worked together on “Frozen.” Both women had only recently arrived at Disney, but Veerasunthorn carried herself with confidence in chaotic production meetings, where team members jockey to have their ideas heard.“She would always cut through with something that was so clear and to the point,” Lee said. “If I could see her nodding, I’d be like, I’m in a good place because I can see that Fawn’s on board. She’s a great barometer.”On “Zootopia,” Veerasunthorn oversaw the poignant goodbye scene between Judy Hopps and her bunny family at the train station. For “Moana,” she worked on the opening village song, when Moana dances with her grandmother. And on “Frozen 2,” she helped actualize the climactic scene when Elsa realizes she’s been hearing her mother’s call.“Wish” employs a different style of animation for Disney, combining the look of traditional watercolors with modern computer animation. The blend is meant to invoke the art of hand-drawn films like “Sleeping Beauty,” and there are numerous references to Disney classics throughout.“We’re celebrating the legacy, but I think if Walt were to be alive today, he wouldn’t want to do the things that he had done,” Veerasunthorn said. “He would want to do something new. That was important to us.”Development on “Wish” began in 2018, and Veerasunthorn joined the project as head of story two years later. But after the first internal work-in-progress screening, the film was at an impasse.Star, a character that, as its name suggests, is a celestial body, originally could speak. But a wishing star that provided direct guidance didn’t allow Asha the space to figure out her own journey. Veerasunthorn offered solutions.Lee recalled of that period: “She was the one who said, ‘This is never going to come together if you can’t feel that what we’re ultimately saying is that this is not just about celebrating wishes. This is about really showing the importance of you working hard to make your dreams come true.’”Veerasunthorn applied repeatedly for jobs at Disney but kept getting turned down: “I’m like, that’s OK, it’s becoming a hobby.” Alex Welsh for The New York TimesIt was a proactive path Veerasunthorn knew well.She grew up in a small seaside town in Thailand’s Chonburi Province, where she said her only exposure to animation as a career came in the form of the local artists who hand-painted posters to announce new movie releases in the town square.At home, she and her younger siblings would watch the 1941 Disney animated film “Dumbo” on repeat. The movie’s fantastical nature and its message of persevering against the odds resonated with her as a young girl.Also, she said wryly, “Maybe that was the only VHS we had.”Her parents ran an auto parts shop in front of the family home, and Veerasunthorn used their industrial cardboard boxes and a wall in the kitchen as her canvases. But she had no formal training, and art was just a hobby.When she was 15, she left home for high school in Bangkok, where she chose a computer science track, hoping to learn to write emails. And after graduating in 2000 with the expectation that she would pursue a practical, lucrative career in her home country, she enrolled in medical school.But Veerasunthorn “did not love” the idea of becoming a doctor, and during her semester break, she began taking art classes and writing to Ratanasirintrawoot, who recommended her to the president at his alma mater, Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio.Her parents were supportive but nervous. No one in Veerasunthorn’s family had pursued a career in the arts. “I was leaving behind something that, to a lot of people, family and friends, is a very solid career to do something that is unknown,” she said.Before moving to the United States, she asked her parents if she could take English lessons to improve her conversational skills. That was too expensive. Instead, her father bought her a subscription to HBO, where she watched “Forrest Gump” and Todd McFarlane’s “Spawn” on repeat.“Initially, I was like, even if I don’t communicate very well, my work speaks for itself,” she said.But Disney wasn’t listening at first. While she was in college, the company shuttered its Florida animation studio, where Ratanasirintrawoot had worked. So Veerasunthorn pivoted, applying at Pixar instead. Rejected. She applied for other jobs at Disney in California. Multiple rejections followed.“I’m like, that’s OK, it’s becoming a hobby,” she said with a laugh. “‘Oh, it’s a new year. Is Disney Animation hiring again?’”Scenes from a career: Veerasunthorn worked at Illumination on “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” and “Despicable Me 2,” top, before joining Disney and taking on scenes in “Zootopia” and “Moana.”Universal Pictures (“Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” and “Despicable Me 2″); Disney (“Zootopia” and “Moana”)After stints in educational Flash animation and as a contributing story artist on Illumination films, including “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” and “Despicable Me 2,” she tried Disney again in 2011. This time, she got in.And a decade later, after that “Wish” screening, Lee — who also served as the film’s co-writer and executive producer — offered Veerasunthorn a directing role alongside Buck in early 2022. It was similar to the transition Lee herself had made on “Frozen,” when she joined Buck as a director midway through that production.“Talent is universal, I always say, but access hasn’t always been,” Lee said. “If you give people a chance, they’ll rise to the occasion. That happened to me.”Historically, Disney animated films have been the domain of male directors. Lee became the first woman at the studio to direct an animated feature with “Frozen” in 2013 and “Frozen II” in 2019. Since then, only Charise Castro Smith, a co-director on “Encanto,” and now Veerasunthorn, have joined the ranks. (At the Disney-owned Pixar, Brenda Chapman was replaced by a male director before the completion of “Brave,” in 2011. Domee Shi became that studio’s first solo female director on a feature, with “Turning Red” in 2022.)For Buck, who made his directorial debut on the 1999 Disney film “Tarzan,” forgoing solo duties again was a welcome reprieve.“These movies are such monsters that, hats off to someone who can do it by themselves. I can’t,” he said, adding that he needs the support. “I love the collaboration.”Away from the studio, Veerasunthorn and her husband, Ryan Green, whom she met in college and who also works in animation at Disney, share a daughter, Kina, who is 7. She’s one of the “production babies” listed in the end credits of “Moana,” and she provided valuable input on “Wish.” When Kina first watched the film’s ending, she was left bawling. Further test screenings would lead the directors to alter the finale to be less traumatic.Lee remained tight-lipped when asked if Veerasunthorn would be working on Disney’s announced third and fourth “Frozen” films or “Zootopia” sequel, but the studio executive said she was eager to see her lead an original project from the start. And for now, Veerasunthorn is reveling in her work on “Wish.”“The journey that a person takes toward a goal, that is what this movie is about,” Veerasunthorn said. “It took me a few tries to get here. If I were to be discouraged the very first time, this would never have happened.”She added, as tears brimmed in her eyes, “This film is saying that the choice is always yours, no matter what the situation.” More

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      in Movies

      Book Review: ‘MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios,’ by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Edwards

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      “The Reign of Marvel Studios” captures how movies based on comic-book properties came to dominate pop culture. At least until now.MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, by Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin EdwardsHollywood doesn’t believe in immortals. From Mary Pickford to the MGM musical, Golden Age cowboys to teenage wizards, the city worships its gods only until their box-office power dims. So it feels audacious — if not foolhardy — to open “MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios” and find its authors, Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Edwards, declaring that it’s difficult to imagine a future where the Disney-owned superhero industrial complex “didn’t run forever.” Even Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man, has yet to engineer a perpetual motion machine.Yet the three veteran pop culture journalists behind this detailed accounting of the company’s ascendancy have the numbers to support it. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, a constellation of solo superhero tales mixed with all-star team-ups, including four installments of “The Avengers,” is Hollywood’s most successful movie franchise of all time — 32 films that have grossed a combined $29.5 billion. By comparison, the book points out that the “Star Wars” series, Marvel’s nearest rival, has notched only 12 films and $10.3 billion.Turning the pages — which are devoid of the usual, and unnecessary, glossy photo spreads — one realizes that superheroes are an X-ray lens into the last decade and a half of Hollywood disruption. Every upheaval gets a mention: corporate mergers; profit-losing streaming services; Chinese censorship; digitally scanned actors; social media cancellations; #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite; the resurgence of a production-to-distribution vertical pipeline that hadn’t been legal since the 1948 Paramount Decree. Pity there’s no room to examine each in depth.First, the origin story. In the ’90s, the former overseer of Marvel Enterprises, Ike Perlmutter (let’s give him the comic book nickname “The Pennypincher”), empowered his entertainment division to license its biggest stars for cheap, scattering Spider-Man, Hulk and the X-Men across other studios in service of selling more toys. (“MCU” familiarizes us with the marketing term “toyetic.”)The saga of who and what changed the company’s direction involves chancy gambles, pivotal lunches at Mar-a-Lago, rivalrous committees and the waning of Perlmutter’s influence, amid the waxing of Kevin Feige, the book’s hero, a five-time U.S.C. Film School reject who started his production career teaching Meg Ryan to log in to AOL for the romantic comedy “You’ve Got Mail.” To establish their independence, the writers mention at the top that Disney, now Marvel’s parent company, asked people not to give them an interview. Many already had, or chose to anyway, although most shy away from on-the-record quotes about the really salacious stuff. No one will say that the rumored $400-million-plus Robert Downey Jr. earned across nine films factored into the decision to kill off Tony Stark, but the innuendo is thicker than Iron Man’s armored exoskeleton.Signs that the Marvel era is nearing the end of its cultural dominance are everywhere, including in this book. Despite the authors’ rah-rah intro (there are no bad Marvel films, they claim, only “a mix of entertaining diversions and inarguable masterpieces”), they wisely sense that the library’s cinema history section will eventually file Feige next to John Ford as filmmakers who defined the spirit of a moment.“MCU” concedes that three of Marvel’s worst-reviewed films were all made in the last three years, just as one of the studio’s cornerstone creatives, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn, decamped to run DC Studios, the home of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.Meanwhile, the churn of faster, cheaper superhero content for Disney+ has led the studio’s weary visual-effects workers (whose exhaustion is well documented here) to vote to unionize. Fandom has become a Sisyphean labor as never-ending spinoff series force a once-rapt audience to pick and choose which story lines they’ll bother to follow.To those seismic grumbles, I’ll add another: Today’s teenagers were toddlers when Marvel first seized the zeitgeist. What generation wants to dig the same stuff as their parents?Marvel’s inescapable obsolescence is the best argument for “MCU”; the genre should be studied with the same rigor as film noir. The book’s admiration for Marvel movies works in its favor, freeing the writers to skip straight to the gossip, like the relative who pulls you aside at Thanksgiving to whisper about your cousin’s divorce. If you didn’t understand the plot of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” before, they’re not wasting space explaining it here.Instead, the book will satisfy your appetite for Marvel’s endless contract negotiations with Sony over the character rights for Spider-Man, which is easy when one encounter climaxes with the former Sony Pictures chairwoman Amy Pascal hurling a sandwich — and an expletive — at Feige. Battles over screenplay credits are even juicier. That’s where you’ll find the most inventive insults.Elsewhere, one has to read several paragraphs past a doctor willing to estimate that “50 to 75 percent” of Marvel’s stars are Hulked-out on performance-enhancing drugs to learn that he has not, in fact, treated any of the studio’s actors. While the hustle to wrap things up before the tome turns into “Captain America: Civil War and Peace” means racing through the most recent projects in a blur, earlier chapters are able to dish the dirt, like whose script notes triggered the collapse of Edgar Wright’s “Ant-Man” and why Feige refused to continue collaborating with the original Bruce Banner, Edward Norton.After all, the authors know a saga is only as exciting as its villain.MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios | By Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Edwards | 528 pp. | Liveright | $35 More

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      in Movies

      Actress Julia Ormond Accuses Harvey Weinstein of Battery in Lawsuit

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      Ms. Ormond also sued Creative Artists Agency, which represented her at the time, and Disney, which owned Mr. Weinstein’s Miramax.The actress Julia Ormond, known for “Legends of the Fall” and “Sabrina,” accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual battery in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in a New York court, claiming that the former film producer forced her to give him oral sex during a business meeting in 1995.Ms. Ormond also sued Creative Artists Agency, which represented her at the time, saying in the complaint that two of its senior agents cautioned her from speaking out — and informed her of the “going rate” for settlements paid to women who accused Mr. Weinstein of sex crimes. She said the sum was $100,000.Mr. Weinstein, now 71, was convicted in 2020 by a New York jury on charges of rape and criminal sexual assault and sentenced to 23 years in prison. He was later convicted of similar crimes in Los Angeles and sentenced to 16 years, to be served after his New York term. Mr. Weinstein has denied the claims against him, saying all encounters were consensual, and is appealing both convictions.“Harvey Weinstein categorically denies the allegations made against him by Julia Ormond, and he is prepared to vehemently defend himself,” Imran H. Ansari, a lawyer for Mr. Weinstein, said in a statement. Mr. Ansari added that her lawsuit was “yet another example of a complaint filed against Mr. Weinstein after the passing of decades.”CAA did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Ms. Ormond said her complaint was the first to sue the powerful agency for what the suit claims was its role in covering up and enabling Mr. Weinstein’s behavior.Ms. Ormond’s complaint, filed in New York Supreme Court, also named the Walt Disney Company and Miramax, which Disney owned from 1993 to 2010. Ms. Ormond claimed the companies also knew about Mr. Weinstein’s predation and failed to protect her from him.Disney declined to comment. Miramax, now owned in part by Paramount Global, did not respond to requests for comment.According to the complaint, CAA secured a two-year production deal between Ms. Ormond and Miramax. She claims that Mr. Weinstein sexually assaulted her in 1995 after a business dinner. According to the suit, Mr. Weinstein said he would discuss a project she was interested in only at the apartment that Miramax had provided for Ms. Ormond as part of her deal.At the apartment, the suit said, Mr. Weinstein stripped naked and forced Ms. Ormond to give him oral sex.Afterward, Ms. Ormond told her agents, Bryan Lourd, now the chief executive of CAA, and Kevin Huvane, now a co-chairman of the agency, about what had occurred, according to the complaint.“Rather than take Ormond’s side and advocate for her interest, they suggested that if she reported Weinstein to the authorities, she would not be believed, and he would seriously damage her career,” the complaint said.Ms. Ormond did not pursue further action, the complaint said, but Mr. Weinstein terminated her contract at Miramax. CAA also transferred her to a younger, less experienced agent, diminishing her career potential, the lawsuit said.In a statement, Ms. Ormond said her lawsuit was a “way to shed light on how powerful people and institutions like my talent agents at CAA, Miramax and Disney enabled and provided cover for Weinstein to assault me and countless others.” More

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      in Theater

      Disney’s Thomas Schumacher Takes on New Broadway Role

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      The longtime head of the company’s theater operations is becoming the division’s chief creative officer, relinquishing his role overseeing its business operations.Thomas Schumacher, the longtime head of Disney’s theatrical arm, a key force behind “The Lion King,” and one of the most powerful people on Broadway, is relinquishing his role overseeing the division’s business operations and stepping into a purely creative role.Schumacher, who is 65 and currently holds the titles of president and producer of Disney Theatrical Group, told his staff on Thursday morning that he will take on a new role as the division’s chief creative officer. His two closest deputies, Andrew Flatt and Anne Quart, will now jointly run the unit as executive vice presidents.Disney has for three decades been the biggest corporate player on Broadway, and it remains an enormously significant factor in the industry. “The Lion King,” which has been running on Broadway for 25 years, regularly outsells its competitors — last week it was, as it often has been, the top-grossing show.Schumacher’s portfolio has included not only Disney’s Broadway shows — “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” at the moment — but also its many touring productions as well as Disney on Ice. His first Broadway credit was in 1997 (as a producer of Disney’s “King David”) and he has since become an important figure in the Broadway community, at one point serving as chairman of the Broadway League, which is the trade organization of producers and theater owners.The move comes at a time when many of Disney’s divisions have been struggling. The theatrical group is small by Disney standards, and although it has had its share of disappointments, its current shows are selling strongly even while most other Broadway shows are not.According to a memo Schumacher sent to his staff, Flatt will have the additional title of managing director, and will oversee strategy and business operations. Quart’s portfolio will include producing and development; she will serve as executive producer of all shows.Disney has not brought a new show to Broadway since 2018, when “Frozen” arrived to chilly reviews. Since that time, Disney acquired 21st Century Fox assets, which gave the company access to a vast new trove of titles.One possible next Disney musical appears to be a stage adaptation of “The Greatest Showman” — the company held a workshop for the show earlier this year, but that production is still relatively early in its development process. Disney has also been continuing to work on its stage adaptation of “Hercules” — after productions directed by Lear deBessonet in Central Park, as part of the Public Theater’s Public Works program, and at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the company is planning a new version in Germany directed by Casey Nicholaw next spring. More

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      in Television

      For Disney, Streaming Losses and TV’s Decline Are a One-Two Punch

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      The company experienced a sharp decline in its traditional TV business for the second straight quarter and will raise subscription prices for its streaming services.Robert A. Iger’s urgent need to overhaul Disney — to turn its streaming division into a profitable enterprise and pull back on its troubled traditional television business — came into sharp relief on Wednesday.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.All the decline came from a low-priced version of Disney+ in India. Last year, Disney lost a bid to renew the expensive rights to Indian Premier League cricket matches. Excluding India, Disney+ gained 800,000 subscribers, primarily overseas.To make streaming profitable, Mr. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, has shifted the focus at Disney+ away from brisk subscriber growth, which requires expensive marketing campaigns. Instead, Disney has been trying to make more money from the Disney+ subscribers it already has. The monthly price for access to an ad-free version of Disney+ rose to $11 in December, from $8.Another hefty price increase is on the way. Starting on Oct. 12, the ad-free version will cost $14, Disney said. Hulu, which is also controlled by Disney, will begin charging $18 for ad-free access, up from $15. As an incentive, Disney will begin selling a new streaming package — ad-free access to both Disney+ and Hulu — for $20 a month starting on Sept. 6.The ad-supported options for both Disney+ and Hulu will remain the same, at $8. “We’re obviously trying with our pricing strategy to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier,” Mr. Iger told analysts on a conference call. The pricing news, along with a vow by Mr. Iger to follow Netflix by cracking down on password sharing, sent Disney shares up roughly 2 percent in after-hours trading.Disney still relies on old-line channels like ESPN and ABC for roughly a third of its operating profits — and those outlets are being maimed by cord cutting, sports programming costs and advertiser pullback. Disney’s traditional channels had $1.9 billion in quarterly operating income, down 23 percent from a year earlier. Disney cited lower ad sales at ABC, partly because of viewership declines, and lower payments from ESPN subscribers, along with higher sports programming costs. (On a positive note, ESPN ad sales increased 10 percent.)It was the second consecutive quarter in which Disney’s traditional TV business recorded a sharp decline in operating income.Disney is exploring a once-unthinkable sale of a stake in ESPN. Bob Levey/Getty ImagesDisney is now exploring a once-unthinkable sale of a stake in ESPN. Not all of it, Mr. Iger has made clear. But he wants “strategic partners that could either help us with distribution or content,” he said during an interview with CNBC last month. Disney has held talks with the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball about taking a minority stake.Earlier this summer, Mr. Iger brought in two former senior Disney executives, Kevin Mayer and Thomas O. Staggs, to consult on ESPN strategy with James Pitaro, the channel’s president, and help put together any deal. Mr. Mayer and Mr. Staggs were both viewed as possible successors to Mr. Iger when they were at Disney, ultimately leaving when they were passed over to start their own media company, Candle Media, with the private equity firm Blackstone as the backer.Their return has sent the Hollywood and Wall Street gossip mills into overdrive. Are Mr. Mayer and Mr. Staggs now back in the running for Disney’s top job? Is Blackstone a potential investor in ESPN? Maybe the whole company is being prepped for a sale — with Apple as the buyer?The first two questions did not come up on Disney’s conference call, and Mr. Iger batted away the third. “I just am not going to speculate about the potential for Disney to be acquired by any company, whether it’s a technology company or not,” he said. “Obviously, anyone who wants to speculate about these things would have to immediately consider the global regulatory environment. I’ll say no more than that.”ESPN on Tuesday announced a 10-year deal with a casino company to create an online sports betting brand and push more aggressively into the lucrative world of online gambling. Notably, the $2 billion deal allows ESPN to rake in gambling money without — in keeping with Disney’s family-friendly brand — becoming a sports book itself.Mr. Iger is also contending with dual strikes in Hollywood. Unionized screenwriters have now been on strike for 100 days and actors for 27. They want higher pay from streaming services and guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence by studios.On the conference call, Mr. Iger addressed the strikes for the first time since mid-July, when he told CNBC — from an elite gathering of chief executives in Idaho — that union leaders were not being “realistic,” prompting an eruption of vitriol on picket lines. On Thursday, reading from a script, Mr. Iger said it was his “fervent hope that we quickly find solutions to the issues that have kept us apart these past few months.”“I am personally committed to working to achieve this result,” he added, saying that he had “deep respect and appreciation” for actors and writers.Disney’s quarter included some encouraging signs. The $512 million streaming loss was 32 percent less than analysts had predicted, for instance. In the fall, quarterly streaming losses reached $1.5 billion. In other words, Mr. Iger’s effort to drastically reduce losses is working. “In spite of a challenging environment in the near term, I’m overwhelmingly bullish about Disney’s future,” Mr. Iger said, noting that the company was on track to exceed a goal, announced in February, to cut $5.5 billion in costs.An 11 percent increase in profitability at Disney’s theme park division — despite weakness at Walt Disney World in Florida — allowed the company to salvage the quarter, to a degree. Companywide revenue totaled $22.3 billion, a 4 percent increase from a year earlier; analysts had expected slightly more. About $2.7 billion in one-time restructuring charges resulted in net loss of $460 million, compared with $1.4 billion in profit a year earlier.Excluding the charges, which were related to the removal of more than 30 underperforming shows and movies from Disney+ and Hulu, Disney reported earnings per share of $1.03. Analysts had expected 95 cents.Growth at Disney’s theme park division came largely from overseas. A year ago, the Shanghai Disney Resort was closed because of the Chinese government’s Covid-19 restrictions. The Shanghai property was open for all of the most-recent quarter. Hong Kong Disneyland also reported improved results. Disney’s five-ship cruise line has also been running at near capacity.Economists have long watched Disney’s domestic theme parks as informal barometers of consumer confidence. Historically, when budgets get tight, families cut back on expensive trips to Disney World. Whether for that reason or another, attendance at the Florida mega-resort declined. Attendance rose at Disneyland, in California.Other theme park operators in Florida have seen similar attendance declines. Some analysts have blamed ticket price increases. Others have said that tourist demand has shifted away from locations that reopened earlier in the pandemic — like Florida — and toward destinations that remained closed for a longer period. More