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Disney ‘having worst year ever’ amid scandals and movie bombs

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Disney ‘having worst year ever’ amid scandals and movie bombs

One Battle After Another is a new Warner Bros. movie out this weekend starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

It’s also a bang-on description of the non-stop pummeling that one of WB’s rival studios, Disney, has endured all year long.

From audience franchise fatigue to creative incompetence to multiple political disasters and award-season flame-outs, Disney has gone through one giant screwup after another.

The picture is bleak. Disney execs locking the doors of their Burbank offices, getting into the fetal position and rocking back and forth while whispering, “Hakuna Matata… Hakuna Matata…”

Only, there will be plenty of worries for the rest of their days. Or, at the very least, the rest of their autumn.

The most recent cataclysmic, hugely embarrassing company implosion involved a late-night TV show I forgot was still on Jiminy Kimmel.

Backlash to Jimmy Kimmel’s reprehensible, untrue comments about the assassination of Charlie Kirk this month was so ferocious it resulted in the longtime host’s “indefinite” suspension from ABC.

That’s an unprecedented move. Remember, back in 1960, Jack Paar walked off The Tonight Show by choice. Many outraged Disney+ and Hulu customers cancelled their subscriptions after the hasty corporate decision. Then a week later — bibbidi bobiddi boop! — Jimmy was brought back with nary an explanation.

What geniuses!

To stem the customer losses, Disney hiked up its struggling streaming services’ prices within days.

But Mickey has been falling off a cliff for months.

The company started out the year with a blizzard of bad press. In March, Snow White starring Rachel Zegler proved a veritable poison apple. The awful movie grossed just $205 million globally (2017’s Beauty and the Beast did $1.26 billion).

T’was the flop heard ‘round the world.

Was its mega-failure because of its star’s outspoken anti-Israel politics, or its horrendous quality? A deadly cocktail of both, methinks.

Beyond late-night pinheads and princesses, there would seem to be dark clouds hovering in every corner of the Magic Kingdom.

Remember how Marvel and Star Wars were supposed to be Hollywood’s only hope? How Pixar was the shining future of animation? How the streaming service Disney+ would emerge the fairest of them all?

Exactly none of that has proven true.

The entire world is sick and tired of Diz’s IP that it overplayed its hand with. They pumped out too many awful movies and too many boring, confusing TV shows, and fans got fed up as a result.

Marvel Studio’s Captain America: Brave New World tanked this Spring. Overrated Fantastic Four got decent reviews but didn’t sell enough tickets. It was outdone by WB’s Superman.

Disney’s only big hit of the first nine months of 2025 was a cheap-looking live-action remake of one of its lesser titles — Lilo and Stitch. That’s a tough model to repeat, because they’re running out of old properties to robotically replicate.

What’s next? “The Rescuers: Down Under”? “The Black Cauldron”?

And what of prestige? Oscars season has been good to Diz in the past. Its Searchlight Pictures reliably is a major awards player.

But Rental Family, the touching Brendan Fraser dramedy from the studio that premiered in Toronto, and Is This Thing On?, Bradley Cooper’s latest at the New York Film Festival that’s said to be on a smaller scale than A Star Is Born and Maestro, are not in the conversation at all.

Really the only thing CEO Bob Iger has going for him right now is Avatar and the studio’s relationship with money-printing director James Cameron.

In December, Avatar: Fire and Ash hits theatres and will surely be the biggest business the House of Mouse has seen in 12 months.

“Fire and Ash.” Sounds like Disney’s 2025.