Animated Gay Teen Romance Film Is Woke Disney’s Latest Box-Office Bomb | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Greg Wilson.

    Disney's latest agenda-pushing project is off to a brutal start at the box office.

    "Strange World," an animated film featuring a gay teen romance, opened Wednesday with a poor $4.2 million in ticket sales and is projected to bring in as little as $21 million over what should be a strong holiday weekend, according to Bloomberg. The film, which pushes sexual orientation and climate agendas, is on track to be Disney's latest over-woke nightmare.

    "That's a terrible result for the $180 million-budgeted animated adventure," wrote Variety's Brent Lang, noting that last Thanksgiving's Disney animated film, "Encanto," was deemed a disappointment after taking in $40.3 million over the long weekend.

    Disney alienated many fans earlier this year when it featured a lesbian kiss in "Lightyear," the latest installment in its "Toy Story" franchise. The company also didn't feature conservative actor Tim Allen as the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the film, which bombed at the box office.

    "Strange World" tells the story of gay teen Ethan, voiced by Jaboukie Young-White, who has the support of his loving, biracial parents, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), and Meridian (Gabrielle Union). The family rejects its fabled heritage as explorers to farm, but ends up pulled back into the family business to hunt for Searcher's father, Jaeger (Dennis Quaid), who went missing when he was a child. Their search, aided by their disabled dog, takes them to Avalonia, a strange world with a fragile ecosystem. Ethan struggles to get past his shyness around his love interest, a boy named Diazo.

    Seattle Times critic Soren Andersen wrote that the film features an "uneasy marriage of clunky psychodrama and overwrought special effects" that made it "a chore to sit through."

    In addition to flopping at the box office, "Strange World" is not upholding Disney's tradition of animated success. It earned a CinemaScore rating of B, the lowest rating ever for a Disney animated feature. Every Disney animated film since "Beauty and the Beast" has received some form of an A, from A+ to A-. The film also had very mediocre scores from audiences, including 59% on Rotten Tomatoes.

    Disney stock has fallen over 33% over the last year amid an ailing economy. It's woes have been blamed on a series of decisions that have alienated its family-minded and in many cases, conservative, customer base. The company clashed bitterly with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over a law that prohibits public schools from teaching kids below the fourth grade about sexual orientation and radical gender theory.

    Disney has also ticked off conservatives by showing a transgender man purchasing tampons in a TV series, and emphatically embracing the trend of Environmental, Social, and Governance, a strategy that courts investors by promoting a host of woke values within the corporate structure. The entertainment giant fired CEO Bob Chapek earlier this week and brought back his predecessor, Bob Iger.