Kathleen Kennedy, Serial Killer
This Disney leader has more kills than Vickie Dawn Jackson, the Angel of Death, one of America's most prolific female serial killers.
Disney should have discovered by now that Kathleen Kennedy is a serial killer. She has more kills than Vickie Dawn Jackson, the Angel of Death, who is credited with 10 kills at Nocona General Hospital in Texas.
Kathleen has single handedly exterminated the MCU, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and the memories of Disney classic animated movies by trying to create live versions in woke.
In every case, just as Transheuser Busch found out, the market for these products is saying - well, more like shouting - "Nope. We don't want that!"
And yet, they persist.
I have to wonder if the leadership has been surrounded by "yes" people for so long, they don't understand what the consumers are saying. Maybe they believe they can make a new world by continuing to put this largely unwanted stuff out. It is almost like the Disney C-Suite is a live action remake of Mike Judge's Idiocracy.
But there is an endpoint coming.
As Herb Stein said, if something cannot go on forever it will stop.
And this version of Disney cannot go on forever.
The Magic Kingdom has had the luxury of believing it was an actual kingdom. Special carveouts and favorable laws were put in place to encourage its growth but it isn't a kingdom, magic or otherwise. It is and always has been a business, and businesses must make a profit and turn over cash to survive. That is the most basic rule of business. Disney isn't a social engineering enterprise, it isn't an arm of the government funded by taxpayer dollars, it is an entity that depends on price to signal whether it is on target with its products - or not.
And boy howdy, are they getting a signal, losing between $800 million and a billion dollars on their last eight or so recent movie releases.
Something Disney always had that no other company in its market had was its reputation. It was a given that the stories told included a moral that supported a strong sense of goodness. An entire generation grew up watching the "Wonderful World of Disney" on Sunday nights, and when those kids became parents, they bought anything branded "Disney" out of the chute because they had an expectation of the quality and consistency they experienced growing up, and they knew these two things aligned with their values.
On this July 4th, I have been thinking about how Disney has formed such a large part of Americana. It's embedded in our culture.
Mom, apple pie, and Disney.
I think we owned every Disney movie on VHS when our kids were growing up. We went to Disney on Ice, Disneyworld and were butts in the seats when a new animated feature opened. Not sure we would do that if we had a young family now. We don't have grandkids yet, but our peers do and they are not locked into the Disney world the way we once were.
People just are not certain about Disney's reputation.
Parents are unsure what Disney is or what it represents. Given the current path, Mickey and Minnie will soon be a non-binary transgender polyamorous couple, Mickey will pregnant and Minnie will be the owner of a drag club and twerking school - and the featured performer.
To top that off, the way they have handled the alterations in their movie franchises, their remakes and new programming send the message that all those things people loved about Disney for nearly half a century were bigoted, evil and wrong and if you don't like the new stuff, you - and your children - are probably bigoted, evil and wrong, too.
That's a pretty hard pill to swallow.
Most people won't.
Let's just hope Bob Iger has the stones to turn Kathleen over to the authorities before she kills again.
All I can say is, "WOW"
Ms Kennedy is a consequence of Mr. Iger's previous tenure.