Some may find it odd that handicappers are calling Lightyear (Disney, 6.17) dead meat despite earnings of $152 million worldwide and $88.7 million domestic. But you have to look at the details, and detail #1 is that Lightyear dropped 65% last weekend, earning a lousy $17.5 million after pulling down $50.5 million on opening weekend.
The Ankler‘s Sean McNulty is calling this the “worst-ever drop for a PIXAR film (not counting Covid-impacted Onward)….with Minions arriving on Friday, [Lightyear] was just a misfire. And cue the ‘PIXAR isn’t the same without Lasseter’ pieces in 3, 2… Just remember to include the reasons why Lasseter was ousted.”
Two days ago N.Y. Post columnist Kyle Smith speculated that Lightyear was hurt by general audiences being fed up with films that secrete woke instruction. Not the brief lesbian kiss but a suggestion that Lightyear might have a hidden lecture or two up its sleeve.
“Hollywood was founded by, and for generations run by, pure showmen who were fanatically devoted to giving the audience what it wanted,” Smith wrote. “Today Hollywood’s message is, ‘Let us entertain you! But first, a brief lecture on what’s wrong with you, the audience…’
“One reason Top Gun: Maverick is such a huge success — the biggest movie of Tom Cruise’s career and probably the biggest movie of this year — is that it simply ignores all quarrelsome real-world issues. Maverick seeks merely to entertain, not to persuade you that the people who made it are virtuous.”
Remember those “Dirty Disney” trend stories from the mid ’90s? (I wrote one for the Sunday entertainment section of the N.Y. Daily News.) I’m not saying that “Dirty Disney” applies today, but between Lightyear‘s chaste, no-big-deal lesbian kiss scene and Disney fighting Gov. Ron DeSantis’s law that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, The Mouse has clearly associated itself with the LGBTQIA agenda of the moment.
The legend continues to scream from the Hollywood hills…”go woke, go broke.”
