To Disney Investors, Woke is No Joke

by Mark Schwendau

This past weekend the new movie “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (Disney), with a reported production budget close to $300 million, opened to ticket sales at $130 million worldwide. That figure includes the studio’s generous estimate of $60 million for the U.S./Canada. When you add in marketing costs, including its Cannes Film Festival premiere, the total investment for this movie might total around $450 million with no path to profit. Some experts now say Disney will be lucky if this movie ever breaks even.

So was the LGBTQA+ agenda to blame for this loss? Apparently not this time.

This time a line in the movie which the Disney promoters were stupid enough to put in the movie trailers gave American moviegoers a new reason to boycott Disney, socialism.

A scene in the movie offered this exchange between three characters:

Indiana Jones: You stole it!

Voller: Then you stole it.

Helena Shaw: Then I stole it. It’s called capitalism.

“Official Trailer | Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny | Disney UK”

The irony is capitalism is what can cause a movie to succeed or fail as people vote with their dollars. The film might have done better if that one-word “capitalism” was changed to “socialism,” but, as they say, “Too late now!”

That is how capitalism works and why socialism does not work. You prosper in capitalism when you give the customer what they want. In socialism, when you try to cram your ideals down the throats of the masses, and they don’t buy it, you lose. Pretty simple concept really.

The podcaster Benny Johnson of “The Benny Show” saw this one coming last week when he began trolling AMC theaters to see how many seats were available as if to buy tickets. In theaters that could seat hundreds when full, only a handful of seats had been sold in theater after theatre around the nation.

“Woke Indiana Jones BOMBS! Empty THEATERS Across America | Disney DISASTER | Fans Abandon Franchise.”

The professional online publication The Wrap also predicted this latest Indiana Jones movie would not reverse Disney’s losing trend following other productions such as The Little Mermaid and Elemental.

This Indiana Jones Dial of Destiny movie is the fifth in the series and is said to be the last. Harrison Ford is now 80, and he has made these films playing the main character until now. Now it would appear even Ford cannot help Disney from its self-destructive path.

OPINION:

This whole program of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) must be stopped. It is dangerous because it has a hidden agenda contrary to American nationalism. It is divisive. It assumes and creates problems where none exist. It is corrupt to the core, as Elon Musk recently pointed out when his car company (Tesla) received a lower corporate ESG score than a cigarette company (Marlboro), raising the obvious question, “How does an electric car company get beat out by a cigarette company in any legitimate environmental impact rating system?!”

While it is true that investors traditionally cannot sue the companies they hold stocks in, this assumption was established before ESG came along. It is wrong and reckless for any board of any corporation to embrace ESG “wokeness” policies, knowing stockholders will suffer an avoidable financial loss. It amounts to a willful and intentionally negligent diminishment of their initial investment.

Disney stock is down 50% since its high just 2 years ago. To investors, this is no joke.

How many more corporate boards and CEOs are going to allow this to go on before they say, “ENOUGH!”

See also:

“Has Bud Light’s Marketing VP Been Fired?”

Copyright © 2023 by Mark S. Schwendau

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Mark S. Schwendau is a retired technology professor who has always had a sideline in news-editorial writing where his byline has been, “Bringing little known news to people who simply want to know the truth.”  He is a Christian conservative who God cast to be a realist.  His website is www.IDrawIWrite.Tech.

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