A brand new rumor claims that viewership on The Walt Disney Company’s streaming service, Disney+, has cratered since the company fired and lied about The Mandalorian star Gina Carano.
Back in February, Disney and Lucasfilm fired Carano through a press statement issued to a number of media outlets.
The statement read, “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future.”
It added, “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
The second sentence is a complete and utter lie. Gina Carano did not denigrate people based on their cultural and religious identities. Instead, she shared a screenshot to her Instagram Stories.
The post from the account warriorpriestgympodcast reads, “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children.”
It then includes a quote, “‘Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”
A little over a month after Carano was fired for the above social media post a new rumor claims that Disney+ viewership has plummeted.
This rumor comes from YouTuber Overlord DVD.
He quotes his source saying, “WandaVision did okay, rounding out at 7.45 million average views per episode. While this number could and most likely will go up, it is too soon to tell how much rewatchability this show has.”
He continues, “But let’s be very clear this in no way even begins to get near the last episode of The Mandalorian, which at two weeks was sitting at 95 million households.”
Overlord DVD would also detail that Disney’s latest theatrical release, Raya and the Last Dragon, has faired poorly on the streaming service as well. He says, “Raya the Last Dragon has also done very poorly according to this source. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 million views.”
He goes on to claim that due to the film’s poor performance that Disney might lower the cost of their Premier Access films like Black Widow and Cruella. Overlord DVD notes it could be lowered to “like 20 to 25 bucks.”
Related: Disney Shelves Upcoming Episode of Running Wild With Bear Grylls Featuring Gina Carano
Overlord DVD then states, “In the opinion of this source, looking at this data, Disney+ may be close to hitting a subscription ceiling. Allegedly, according to this source, new subs are way down, almost 63.9% from just a few weeks ago.”
He continues, “This source believes [Carano’s] firing did have a substantial impact. Before that firing, WandaVision was easily getting up to 5 million views on night one. After the firing, WandaVision episodes were struggling to get over 2 million if this source is correct.”
“And this source further claims that Disney has publicly announced they will provide no more subscriber updates unless it is a milestone and that’s proof it’s slowing down,” Overlord DVD adds.
Disney did recently claim that the premiere of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was the most watched premiere on Disney+ ever.
In a press release, the company claimed, “The Falcon and The Winter Soldier” from Marvel Studios ranked as the most watched series premiere ever on Disney+ during its opening weekend, Friday, March 19 – Sunday, March 22, and the most watched title overall for the same time period on a global basis, including in Disney+ Hotstar markets.”
Furthermore they claimed The Falcon and The Winter Soldier premiere joined the premieres of WandaVision and season two of The Mandalorian as “the three most-watched Disney+ Original series opening weekends to-date.”
In Disney’s Q1 FY21 Earnings Report released on February 11th, they detailed they had 94.9 million paid subscribers to Disney+, up from 26.5 million in December 2019.
However, with the increase in subscribers the overall average monthly revenue declined to $4.03 in 2021 from $5.56 in December 2019, a decrease of 28%.
On March 9th, Disney claimed they had “surpassed 100 million global paid subscribers in just 16 months since its launch.”
Disney CEO Bob Chapek said at the time, “The enormous success of Disney+ —which has now surpassed 100 million subscribers—has inspired us to be even more ambitious, and to significantly increase our investment in the development of high-quality content.”
He added, “In fact, we set a target of 100+ new titles per year, and this includes Disney Animation, Disney Live Action, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic. Our direct-to-consumer business is the Company’s top priority, and our robust pipeline of content will continue to fuel its growth.”
Related: Kathleen Kennedy Gets The Hitler Meme Video Treatment After Gina Carano Firing
Disney announced their second quarter 2021 financial results will be announced in a webcast beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, May 13, 2021.
What do you make of this rumor?