Disney Is Reportedly Desperate To Get Male Audience Back After Years Of Pushing It Away
Studio solicits ideas for males aged 13-28 despite owning Star Wars, Marvel and Indiana Jones properties
Well, if you needed more examples of the incompetence of The Walt Disney Company leadership, it just gave us yet another spectacular one.
On Thursday, Variety reported that sources say that Disney Studios is actively soliciting ideas and pitches from creatives that it hopes will lead to new movies that appeal to younger men. Specifically, males aged 13-28. That's not a misprint; a movie studio is trying desperately to figure out stories and ideas that might appeal to teenage guys and young male adults.
And not just any studio; the studio that owns the rights to the "Star Wars" franchise. And the "Indiana Jones" franchise. And owns Marvel Studios.
How is it possible to be this incompetent? Because Disney has demonstrated that, like most of its political party, it has a lengthy track record of abandoning male audiences.
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Disney CEO Bob Iger, speaking in front of a Disney+ advertisement. (Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Disney)
Disney Has No Idea How To Appeal To Young Men, Apparently
Again, Disney owns "Star Wars," one of the most popular film franchises with men in the history of the entertainment industry. It owns "Indiana Jones," one of the most legendary male action heroes in the history of the entertainment industry. It owns Marvel Studios, which makes movies based on comic books, a hobby almost exclusively dominated by men.
The issue is that for years, when Disney released movies under those franchises, it did everything in its power to push men away. And now Disney is stunned to find out that men left its brand.
The most recent "Star Wars" trilogy was generally bad, which is the biggest issue, but it also starred a female lead, Daisy Ridley, as the hero of the story, "Rey."
"Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" made its lead character into a broken shell. Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones went from the most popular teacher at his university, to a wife-beater wearing failure in a dingy New York apartment, lecturing to a nearly-empty hall of sleeping students. The film also clearly intended Phoebe Waller-Bridge's "Helena Shaw" character to be his replacement. Though thankfully, that idea appears to have been shelved thanks to the film becoming yet another failure.
Marvel Studios movies changed focus so dramatically after "Avengers: Endgame" that it was derisively nicknamed the "M-She-U."
One of the few exceptions to Marvel's box office decline? "Deadpool & Wolverine," a film that explicitly targeted males with characters men like, and eschewed the type of "woke" storylines and lectures that have dominated other Disney releases.
Here's what this comes down to: Disney made it a priority to try and bring women into previously male-dominated action movies and franchises. Females did not show up, because they didn't care, and male viewers were turned off, disinterested, and disillusioned. So Disney, in attempting to downplay men, wound up losing everybody. Smart business strategy!
That's bad enough, but the fact that Disney does not understand what men want in movies? Somehow, that's even worse.
Men generally, but not always, want action, adventure, and humor that appeals to them. And the storylines that are often associated with those characteristics. It's not complicated. Again, look at "Deadpool and Wolverine." But Disney, and almost every studio, is incapable of making those types of movies consistently because the company is consumed by a political ideology that demonizes those traits. "Toxic masculinity," "the future is female," and so on have become an inseparable part of modern Hollywood.
Turns out, if you tell men you hate them, they listen.