Rumor: Disney Culture Won’t Change Because Employees Are Silenced, Executives Think They Are Too Big Too Fail, Company’s Suffered Massive Brain Drain

John F. Trent |

Jul 27, 2023

Robert A. Iger, Executive Chairman and Chairman of the Board, at The Walt Disney Company’s Investor Day 2020.

A new rumor claims that The Walt Disney Company will not see their fortunes change any time soon as the company has instituted a culture of silence preventing employees from calling out bad story ideas, they’ve significantly lost a lot of talent, and executives think the company is too big too fail.

This new rumor comes from scooper WDW Pro, who read an email from one of his source and noted the information provided by this source was corroborated by two other anonymous sources.

He noted the source is “very, very highly connected inside the industry. Very high.”

WDW Pro begins the email, “Disney is in trouble because Sports and Parks can no longer finance the losses being incurred elsewhere: Disney+, all the studios, lost licensing revenue, etc… ESPN went woke and the Parks are now down so there is no backstop for all the ailing divisions and the totally off the rails spending. It’s a free fall.”

After noting Disney’s Cruise Line division is also losing money, WDW Pro continued, “Again, you think that they would rapidly cut back on the damaging stuff, make peace with Florida, but that’s not really happening and it’s unlikely to change. The people that I know … tell me that so much of the rank and file are totally oblivious to the impact the agenda and other DEI stuff has had. It’s everything except that that’s causing the downfall according to those people who work at the highest levels of Disney.”

The source’s email then asserts, “A research subcontractor I know spoke to some brand people over at Disney and the problem here is that you can’t say out loud the drain has come in part because of the DEI, the agenda, the woke stuff that the company has done. You’re not allowed to say it. If you say it you will be let go. You will be silenced. You will be punished. You will be ostracized and put to the side.”

“And if you can’t openly talk about the real problems how can you hope to fix them? The board is a problem. Iger is a problem. Key division heads are a problem,” the source declared.

“Those Geeks + Gamers guys are funny when they fly off the handle about Kathleen Kennedy still having her job and perhaps having some dirt on half of Hollywood, but even if they promote her out of Lucasfilm by now she’s wrecked everything under their purview,” WDW Pro relayed.

“She’s wrecked everything. Acolyte, Rey movies, what? All they have is a thin stand of Filoni Star Wars and if the upcoming shows fail their plan B after Rey is done,” the source said.

The email continued, “You know something? It’s not just management and creative’s ideation. Oh, no, no, no, they’ve actually lost a lot of technical and creative story ability. Forget the woke for a moment, The [Little] Mermaid was dark, badly edited, poorly paced, awful music, etc… They’ve lost key Imagineers, broken key links to past talent in that regard. The Brain Drain is real.”

The source explained, “What I mean is even if they wanted to tell a good story, one that fails its stand-alone DEI test, I don’t know if they could actually make it properly and for a reasonable cost. If you really want to see core Disney wreckage don’t look to Lucasfilm or Marvel instead sit back and feast your eyes on the recent Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and Little Mermaid then watch the three originals. And remember you are not allowed to say what is causing these properties to fail inside Disney. That is where free speech goes to die.”

(L-R): Scuttle (voiced by Awkwafina), Flounder (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), and Halle Bailey as Ariel in Disney's live-action THE LITTLE MERMAID. Photo courtesy of Disney. © 2023 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Later in the video, WDW Pro shared information he received from another source that explained why Disney thinks they do not need to change their behavior, “The boycott/avoidance of [Bud Light] in a consumer backlash movement is based on the fact that the product itself is indistinguishable from its main competitors (Miller Lite and Coors Light) in blinds and all available at the same distribution points, virtually side by side at retail with similar, identical prices under normal circumstances.”

“In other words avoiding that beverage that’s under fire is very easy because there is very little inconvenience to the light beer consumer,” the source shared.

WDW Pro concluded, “Disney, on the other hand, avoiding Disney is a major inconvenience and so perhaps the folks at The Walt Disney Company assume consumers would be too burdened by trying to boycott them. And therefore, they’re not worried about it.”

There’s a plethora of evidence supporting what these alleged anonymous sources claim. Back in April 2022 a Disneyland employee noted how Disney’s culture is extremely political and makes it difficult to speak up for what is right.

She said, “I’m a cast member here, well for Disneyland actually, I have been with them for quite a long time,” the woman said.

“It has gotten very political and it’s gotten very hard to be who you are. It’s gotten very hard to be someone who has conservative values. Someone who believes in the right to choose, somebody who believes that it’s okay to stand up for righteousness. It is okay to stand up for righteousness.”

She would later add, “Any Disney cast members that are afraid to be bold, that are afraid to be courageous, stand up. It’s okay, you’re not alone.”

BREAKING: A conservative Disney Employee says “it’s gotten very hard to be someone with conservative values” working for Disney in front of the Disney HQ in Burbank CA

MORE: https://t.co/Yat4MkR9j4 pic.twitter.com/wLVOGFJQMj

— Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) April 7, 2022

As far as executives believing they are too big too fail, one need only look at the fact that both Kathleen Kennedy and Kevin Feige still hold their positions at Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios despite cratering their once storied brands with woke ideology, shoddy storytelling, and subpar production values.

These two executives have overseen massive declines at the box office for their respective studios as well as turned off huge portions of their fanbase. Both studios have also produced some of their worst rated content ever. The Mandalorian had some of the worst rated episodes for its third season. The third season even has a rotten 50% on Rotten Tomatoes.

As for Marvel Studios, the recently concluded Secret Invasion has a 61% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. On IMDb the show has a 6.4 rating, but the series’ last episode has a season worst rating of 5.9 so far.

The Walt Disney Company even admitted that much of the content that they created on Disney+ was not driving subscriptions and they were going to take a $1.8 billion write off on it while removing it from Disney+.

The company’s then Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy announced during one of the company’s earnings reports earlier this year, “We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation that you’ve heard Bob discuss. As a result we will be removing certain content from our streaming platform and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion. The charge, which will not be recorded in our segment results, will primarily be recognized in the third quarter as we complete our review and remove the content. And going forward we intend to produce lower volumes of content in alignment with this strategic shift.”

As far as a brain drain, that’s a little bit harder to pin down, but the company let go of Pixar chief John Lasseter in 2018. He moved to Skydance Animation and has been eating Disney and Pixar’s lunch since then.

Lucasfilm still appears to employ top artists such as Doug Chiang who create impeccable concept art, the problem with Lucasfilm appears to be turning that concept art into a coherent and entertaining story as evidenced by all three seasons of The Mandalorian.

The Walt Disney Company is in the process of letting go of 7,000 people. One has to assume many of those individuals might be experts in technical jobs.