May 4, 2024

Athens News

News in English from Greece

‘Weird World’: Disney’s first film with a gay protagonist flopped at the box office

Disney’s new movie Weird World, with its openly gay protagonist, flopped at the US box office, effectively losing $180 million because US residents didn’t want to send their children to see it.

Although the film was expected to make between $30 million and $40 million from last Wednesday, which was its release date, to Sunday, the “predictions” did not materialize. Even though it’s Thanksgiving holiday week, it doesn’t seem to generate enough interest in Americans to make them go to the movies.

The animated film opened in 4,174 theaters in North America and grossed $11.9 million over the weekend and a total of $18.6 million over the entire five-day period. This is the first feature-length Disney film to have such a low box office.. Previously, “first place” was occupied by “Encanto”, which collected $ 40 million for this five-day period, and “Lightyear” took the second place with $ 51 million. Even West Side Story managed to raise $10.5 million in fewer days and in the midst of a pandemic.

Although the film received mostly positive reviews (perhaps also for its promotion of the LGBT+ program), the results (since the world is the final judge) at the box office did not live up to them. The story follows the Kleydes, a family of explorers who decide to travel to many planets. It’s a children’s sci-fi movie that focuses on… family. What is surprising, and one might expect, to “pull in” audiences is the fact that this is the first film in the franchise to feature an openly gay protagonist. However, the rest of the characters have special features.. In particular, the family’s teenage daughter is a lesbian, the dog has only three legs, and the rest of the characters are of different races.

Jake Gyllenhaal, Jack Quaid, Gabrielle Union, Lucy Liu, Jabuki Young-White and Alan Tudyk provided their voices for the characters.

Back in March 2022, it was announced that Disney would increase the number of LGBT characters in its new films. Reported by journalist Christopher Rufo in his Twitter-account, with a link to a recording of a Disney corporate video call. The main initiator of this decision was the representative of the corporation responsible for the content Carey Burke. During the general meeting, she promised to bet on gender policy and thus make future projects of the company more inclusive. According to Burke, the situation also affected her children, one of whom is transgender and the other is pansexual.

For some, the reason for the “failure” of the film at the box office was not the fact that Disney is now openly promoting … “diversity”, but it may be due to the release of the film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and the upcoming sequel “Avatar”, in which the production company certainly had the best marketing strategy! Nevertheless, the downward trend in demand for Hollywood products that promote LGBTQ+ is evident. The audience is clearly fed up with the theme and propaganda of “diversity”, and vote against it with their wallets.





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