Daily Disney Disaster: The Reason for the Long Delay of the Blade Movie...? Disney Wanted to Make It About Women and "Life Lessons"

In the recent South Park episode, "Kathleen Kennedy" kept demanding, regarding everything from a Bambi remake to a plate of linguine, to "Put a chick in it! Make her gay! Make it laaaame!"

The Blade movie has been repeatedly delayed. The would-be lead keeps rejecting the scripts as not what he signed up for.

Now we find out his objection to all the scripts: He signed up to star as the lead in a male-oriented action fantasy, but all of Marvel's scripts make the main characters, get this, Stronk Diverse Women.

As public criticism mounts, Feige is pulling the plug on scripts and projects that aren't working. Case in point: the "Blade" reboot. With Mahershala Ali signed on for the eponymous role of a vampire, things looked promising for a 2023 release date. But the project has gone through at least five writers, two directors and one shutdown six weeks before production. One person familiar with the script permutations says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead, a bizarre idea considering that the studio had two-time Oscar winner Ali on board.

That's what everyone wants to see in an action/horror vampire-hunter movie, three female leads and lots of life lessons.

Put a chick in it! Make her gay! Make it laaaaaame!

Amid reports that Ali was ready to exit over script issues, Feige went back to the drawing board and hired Michael Green, the Oscar-nominated writer of "Logan," to start anew. Speculation around town is that the studio is looking to make the film, now slated for 2025, on a budget of less than $100 million -- a deviation from Marvel's big-spending strategy.

A friend says:

Hire an Oscar-winning actor to lead a move with the character's name in the title, and then back-bench him in a "woman's voice" story. Just incredible.

The South Park episode claimed, falsely, that this is a Kaffeine Kennedy problem. No. It may have started with her, but the cancer has infected all of Disney, including Marvel.

It's a Bob Iger problem. It's a Kevin Feige problem.

Disney is now desperate -- and there's more bad news coming.

With Iger publicly acknowledging the downside of a Marvel TV glut that "diluted focus and attention," the keepers of the comic book empire are considering some dramatic moves. Sources say there have been talks to bring back the original gang for an "Avengers" movie. This would include reviving Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow, both of whom were killed off in "Endgame." (That shouldn't be a stumbling block -- in comic books, beloved characters are often killed off, only to be resurrected thanks to the power of things like the multiverse.) But the studio hasn't yet committed to the idea -- if it were able to bring those actors back, it wouldn't come cheap. Sources say Downey Jr.'s upfront salary for "Iron Man 3" was around $25 million.

Will that solve Marvel's Majors problem? When the "Quantumania" actor was arrested in March, Disney executives insisted that they could afford to play a wait-and-see game, given that "Avengers: The Kang Dynasty" wasn't expected to begin shooting until early 2024. But then Majors was dropped in quick succession by his publicists and managers. (He remains a client at WME -- the agency where he landed after CAA parted ways with him, pre-arrest, for his "brutal conduct" toward staff, says one source. CAA declined to comment.) In April, other alleged domestic violence victims of Majors began cooperating with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Then, ahead of a key hearing in October, media outlets including Variety obtained a court filing that referenced a police incident in London involving Majors that led his ex-girlfriend to seek medical attention. Making matters even stickier, the ex-girlfriend also worked on "Quantumania" as a movement coach, and the London incident took place while Majors was shooting Season 2 of "Loki." On Oct. 25, a New York judge denied Majors' motion to dismiss the case, which ensures that the actor will stand trial in late November. His legal team is attempting to keep some material in the case sealed.

The Marvels, of course, is expected to be a disaster. A new projection puts its opening at $45 to $50 million. That would be an earthquake in Burbank. I heard of another guy reducing his projections to about $45 million, and saying that he actually thinks it will be on the low side of that, but he wants to hedge his bets because the original did, somehow, make a billion dollars. (Only because Disney lied and claimed it was necessary viewing to understand Avengers: Endgame.)

Its director -- a barely-qualified person who'd never directed an action movie or even a middle-budget movie before -- has 's already confessed she felt overwhelmed on the set and didn't understand what the hell was even supposed to be happening.

DaCosta said she approached some of the other directors who have worked for Marvel recently to ask about Kevin Feige. It does seem like he would be more than a little intimidating for a new Marvel director.

"Are they going to kill me and destroy my soul? Is Kevin Feige a bad man?" she asked. "And they were like, 'No, he's just a good guy who was a nerd.'"

She also spoke about talking to Destin Daniel Cretton, the director of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, especially about the challenges that come along with some of the visual FX in Marvel movies, texting him things like...

'I'm overwhelmed 'I'm so stressed.' Sometimes you'd be in a scene and you'd be like, 'What the hell does any of this s-- mean?' Or an actor's looking at some crazy thing happening in space, and they're looking at a blue X. There were obviously hard days, and days where you're like, 'This just isn't working.'

.'

According to this new article, she actually Soft Quit the job and began working on another movie while she was supposed to be directing the post-production on The Marvels:

[I]nstead of seamlessly building on the success of "Captain Marvel," this move resulted in four weeks of reshoots to bring coherence to a tangled storyline.

Then eyebrows were raised again when DaCosta began working on another film while "The Marvels" was still in postproduction -- the filmmaker moved to London earlier this year to begin prepping for her Tessa Thompson drama "Hedda." (A representative for DaCosta declined to comment.)

"If you're directing a $250 million movie, it's kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go," says a source familiar with the production.

In fairness, many of these "directors" are just fronts, anyway. Marvel movie special effects scenes are really directed by the visual effect supervisors. And these movies are mostly special effects scenes. Directors have quit when they were told "don't worry about the action scenes, we'll do them all for you." It could be that this unqualified woman realized she was just a front and wasn't really the director at all and so just fucked off to do her own movie.

Disney is so desperate that its new advertisements Say the Quiet Part Out Loud and are micro-targeting the true anticipated audience for The Marvels:

I mentioned the other day that the movie features Sam Jackson telling a black woman she can do anything she wants, without any training or experience, just by utilizing "black girl magic." Apparently Disney is so proud of that line that they're actually putting it in trailers. This new clip has the "Black girl magic!" line at the end.

For this next story, a little backstory about Ike Perlmutter.

Perlmutter was, IIRC, a toy company magnate. His company was making Marvel action figures when Marvel went bankrupt, so he bough Marvel.

The left hates him because he's a friend and supporter of Trump, and because he dared to offer his expert opinion, as a toy company/action figure magnate, that boys will not buy action figures of girls, so companies should make few girl action figures.

He's absolutely 100% right about this, but the left insists on pretending the world is as it is not, so we now see toy aisles full of unbought girl action figures, rotting on the shelves forever.

He also said that he didn't want to make Marvel movies about female heroes, because they wouldn't make money. He was mostly right; see Black Widow and the upcoming The Marvels disaster for evidence.

Yes, a huge character like Wonder Woman can make some money, but that's a rare bird. The Perlmutter Rule is 94% correct, which is pretty good for any rule.

Perlmutter retained a place on Disney's board even after Disney bought Marvel. But Iger and Feige schemed to fire him, which they did last year.

Here's the fun part: Perlmutter is also a close friend of Nelson Peltz, who lives down the street from him.

Peltz is now preparing the battlespace for a proxy war against Bob Iger.

And guess who just pledged all of his Disney shares to Peltz to help him depose Iger from power?

Former Marvel boss Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter has given fellow billionaire Nelson Peltz control over his voting shares of The Walt Disney Company -- setting the stage for a renewed proxy war with Mouse House boss Bob Iger.

Perlmutter, the billionaire investor who was unceremoniously fired by Disney earlier this year as head of the comic books division, threw his support behind Peltz as the company's stock remains mired near nine-year lows.

"While I was a Disney employee, I was not comfortable publicly stating my views on the company and its performance," Perlmutter, who sold Marvel to Disney for $4 billion in 2009 and remains one of the company's largest independent shareholders, told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

"As someone with a large economic interest in Disney's success, I can no longer watch the business underachieve its great potential."

Perlmutter told The Journal he will use his influence within Disney to push for board seats for Peltz and perhaps other nominees from Trian.

Armed with Perlmutter's shares, Trian boosted its stake in Disney to 33 million shares worth around $2.5 billion, according to the outlet.

Perlmutter's approximately 30 million shares make up a majority of Trian's stake in the company.

With the ex-Marvel boss' backing, Peltz, who now has four times the amount of shares that he did during his initial proxy fight less than a year ago, will be in a stronger position to push for more seats on Disney's board of directors when the nominating window opens in December.

...

"I have no doubt that my termination was based on fundamental differences in business between my thinking and Disney leadership, because I care about return on investment," Perlmutter told The Wall Street Journal this past spring.

In other words, Iger wants to make "social change," and I want to make money.

You choose, Disney shareholders.

Gina Carano is ripping Disney again, specifically its off-putting, anti-charisma "star" Rachel Zegler. Even though there's supposedly a "strike" on, Carano notes that Film Actors Guild will give major studios waivers permitting actors to work on films there, while denying those waivers to everyone else.

One waiver was granted to Rachel Zegler so she could go on social media to promote her upcoming Hunger Games prequel. (If it's a prequel, you know it's gonna be great!)

The Film Actors Guild has banned people from promoting any studio project -- they're not allowed on talk shows; they're not even allowed to wear Halloween costumes of movie characters -- but they gave Zegler a hall pass to promote this movie.

Gina Carano both seizes and pounces:

Gina Carano @ginacarano

What an odd strike this is... small non studio productions are having trouble getting waivers but studios get the interim agreements left and right..

Celebrities go from the picket line to their promotional tours and red carpets. What happened to that "I better get paid for every hour I stand in this dress" talk.

Apparently this is a direct reference to Snow White "star" Rachel Zegler. One of the entertainment YouTubers mentioned that "I better get paid..." is a quote from Zegler. Celebrities want to be paid by studios to go on press junkets and talk shows and to attend premieres.

Meanwhile the people who are actually suffering are the crews and actors not apart of studio projects or the "in group" to get their waivers granted. The ones whose money will run out quicker, the ones who are having to pick up a second line of work. The ones who will be controlled a whole lot easier once the strike ends based off of desperation to work.

Think that was by accident?

Maybe they should've granted waivers for ALL the non studio productions, keep people working and halt ALL studio productions if they really wanted to make a difference and reach a faster agreement...

Who is this strike really intended to hurt again? Better make a deal quick, people are starting to notice. I'm sure it'll be in favor of all the "right" people and all the "right" people will pat themselves on the back on an excellent deal and months of suffering well worth the wait.

At least while you are at it, you could throw into the agreement that it will never again be permitted to allow any production to force inject poison, I mean experimental jabs, into peoples bodies in the name of science ever again.

Ya know, cause that in itself wasn't something big enough to have had a huge strike over.

The hypocrisy is palpable.
The system is rigged and littered with posers.

Art is free, creativity is your rebellion. You don't need permission to do that.

She links pictures to make it clear she is in fact talking about Rachel Zegler:

By the way, this image from the Hunger Games prequel features a Dude in a Dress, so yay:

Gina Carano no doubt suspects that Disney was actually controlling bots who savaged her on Twitter.

And it turns out, a former HBO/Max employee now says that HBO/Max did in fact pay for a bot army to attack their critics.

And, get this -- the bot army used identity politics smears as their weapon in making these attacks.

A new report details that HBO and Max executives Casey Bloys and Kathleen McCaffrey created an army of trolls to target critics of their movies and television shows.

This new report comes from Cheyenne Roundtree at Rolling Stone who claims that Bloys and McCaffrey discussed "what they called a 'secret army' to fire back at several TV critics on Twitter (now known as X) as well as anonymous commenters on articles about HBO programming, according to text exchanges reviewed by Rolling Stone."

Roundtree details that the executives trolled "television critics with snarky responses from a fake Twitter account -- and dropping pro-HBO comments on trade publication stories" such as Deadline.

According to the Rolling Stone report, the documents they reviewed which included text exchanges between Bloys and McCaffrey are part of a lawsuit by former HBO staffer Sully Temori that accuses HBO of harassing and retaliating against him after he disclosed a mental health diagnosis.

In the lawsuit Temori alleges he created "fake online accounts to respond to critics."

Allegedly McCaffrey came to Temori and informed him, "[Bloys] always texts me asking me to find friends to reply ... is there a way to create a dummy account that can't be traced to us to do his bidding."

Temori's lawyer, Michael Martinez, informed the outlet, "First and foremost, I think [this lawsuit] is about HBO's culture and how it fosters a dynamic of ongoing harassment and discrimination in the workplace."

He added, "They joke about people outside of HBO, they joke about people within HBO.... You suffer through some bullying until you can't suffer anymore."

Interestingly, one of the troll accounts created by Temori used identity politics to lampoon critics.

In response to a criticism of Joss Whedon's The Nevers by The New York Times' James Poniewozik, the troll account created by Temori posted, "how shocking that two middle aged white men (you & Hale) are s****ing on a show about women......."

Ready for the non-denial?

An HBO spokesman informed Rolling Stone it would not "comment on select exchanges between programmers and errant tweets."

Now, did Disney also create a bot army and pay shills to attack its critics, smearing them as misogynists, transphobes, and racists? There's no way of knowing but absolutely 100% they did. We've previously seen people at the Star Wars Story Group prominently linking nobodies on Twitter and YouTube making attacks on critics of Star Wars. Almost as if there were some secret communication going on besides the scenes.

And how's this for a segue, there are rumors that someone's about to drop a "nuclear bomb" of emails exposing Disney/the Lucasfilm story group's involvement in cowardly corporate stealth smears of its critics.

In the wake of Gina Carano putting Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm on blast, a new rumor details that a "nuclear bomb" of emails and notes about Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm story group members revealing their bad behavior will be made public in the near future.

...

In the wake of these two posts, YouTuber Drunk3PO noted on Culture Casino's Late Night Culture this "nuclear bomb" would soon be made public.

Drunk3PO asserted, "The day is coming. The day is coming and I know the day is coming where there is a lot of emails, there is a lot of notes that someone has collected. And when you see this it will blow your face off as to how disgusting this woman is, Kathleen Kennedy and the people that running Lucasfilm especially over there at the storyboard group."

"So you guys just got a little taste of what's to come," he added.

A little bit later during the stream, he added, "Again, there's something, there's a nuclear bomb that's coming and just be ready. All of our YouTube channels will benefit once this stuff hits."

I don't know much about Drunk3PO but some of the entertainment bloggers say he's friends with Carano so when he announces "rumors" like this, he's actually just reporting what Carano is telling him.

The video where he discuses that can be found at the link to BoundingIntoComics.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 04:40 PM

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