Is Disney Finally Learning When It Goes Woke, It Goes Broke?

When Disney goes woke, it goes broke. When it remembers its audience, however, it succeeds.

It has been a good few weeks for the Walt Disney Company. Its two most recent films are history-setting box office successes, and the company that has spent years hemorrhaging money may be seeing a light at the end of the tunnel if it takes the right lessons away from its success.

Last week, Disney announced that its recently released animated film “Inside Out 2” had overtaken “Frozen 2” as the highest-grossing animated film in history, globally grossing $1.46 billion since its premiere on June 14. 

On Sunday, July 28, the most recent Marvel Cinematic Universe entry, “Deadpool and Wolverine,” became the sixth highest-grossing opening weekend of all time, grossing $438 million worldwide in three days. It has also been well received, with a 96 percent positive audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. 

This is good news for a company that has suffered a challenging few years. The company ousted its CEO Bob Chapek in November 2022 and replaced him with Bob Iger, who quickly announced a slate of sequels, layoffs, and cost-cutting endeavors. The company was subsequently beset by a poor year of box office returns. Seven of Disney’s major 2023 releases, including “Wish,” “Elemental,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Haunted Mansion,” “Indiana Jones 5,” “The Marvels,” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” underperformed at the box office.

Overall, this year has shown good signs for the Disney corporation and indications that it may be willing to make changes. FX’s “Shōgun” became a critically acclaimed hit and “FX’s most-watched show ever on our streaming platforms.” Sunday also came with the news that Robert Downey Jr. and the “Avengers: Infinity War” directors Joe and Anthony Russo would be returning to the MCU for “Avengers: Doomsday,” the newest major event film in the franchise set for release in May 2026. 

Commenters have noted that “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool and Wolverine” mark a noted departure from the implicit “wokeness” of many of Disney’s box office bombs. “Deadpool and Wolverine,” which grossed more in its opening weekend than “The Marvels” did in its entire theatrical run, makes fun of cancel culture, feminism, and wokeness. 

“Inside Out 2” similarly avoided “woke” tropes, with film critic Christian Toto arguing that the film presents a conservative path forward “from a bean counter perspective.” Worth It Or Woke similarly reported, “Even though you can feel how badly it wants to be, it’s not a woke mess.”

This evolution would track with Iger’s November 2022 CNBC interview, in which he announced that Disney would shy away from partisan discourse after the company’s failed political battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “We have to entertain first. It’s not about messages.”

It will be curious to see if Disney’s upcoming releases of “Moana 2,” “Mufasa: The Lion King,” “Agatha All Along,” and “Captain America: Brave New World” reflect this overall direction of the company in light of the success of their nonwoke blockbusters. 

This doesn’t mean Disney still isn’t in hot water. On May 7, the company released its Q2 financial earnings report. Iger reported strong improvements from his profitability measures while acknowledging that the “path to profitability will not be linear,” suggesting that Q3 will see softer returns. Disney Plus even posted its first profit in nearly five years. However, the company’s stock still took an almost 10 percent dip that day, due to Q3 fears. The stock is currently down more than 24 percent from its peak on April 2. 

On July 23, The Wall Street Journal reported that ousted Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter — noted for internally pushing against female or nonwhite superhero films — had sold all of his 25.6 million Disney shares from April to mid-July. He reportedly expects Disney’s stock price to continuously drop from its current value of about $93 to $65-75 per share. 

The company is also still caught in significant culture war issues. On July 24, U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett denied a motion from the Disney corporation that would’ve dismissed a defamation lawsuit from “Mandalorian” star Gina Carano, meaning that the Elon Musk-backed free-speech lawsuit could make it to trial. She was fired after the show’s second season for an Instagram post comparing the dehumanization of Holocaust victims to political retribution against Republicans. Disney accused her of “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities.” 

The recent Disney Plus series “Star Wars: The Acolyte” was also “review bombed” by fans, who pushed the Rotten Tomatoes audience score to 17 percent, ranking it as one of the worst-received Star Wars projects along with the infamous “Star Wars: Holiday Special.” Online critics have lambasted the show’s diversity pushes, moral relativism, continuity issues, and queer coding. Regardless, the show has retained viewership enough to make the streaming charts and led Disney to announce two spin-off novels. 

Disney’s newest upcoming series “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” continues to show signs of troubled development, with the show reportedly due in late 2024 despite no marketing or publicly available promotional materials. 

Tyler Hummel is a Nashville-based freelance journalist, a College Fix Fellow, and a member of the Music City Film Critics Association. He has contributed to The Dispatch, The New York Sun, Hollywood in Toto, The Pamphleteer, Law and Liberty, Main Street Nashville, North American Anglican, Living Church, and Geeks Under Grace.