Walt Disney Company

‘Lilo & Stitch’ at 20: How It Broke the Mold Long Before ‘Moana’

When the director Chris Sanders was starting work on “Lilo & Stitch,” the film’s visual development supervisor, Sue Nichols, made a comparison that startled him. “She did a side-by-side drawing of Mulan next to Nani,” Sanders said, referring to Lilo’s older sister. “And she pointed out that Mulan is actually missing pieces of her anatomy, […]

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After a Political Storm, Gay Days Return to Disney

The anti-L.G.B.T.Q. protests culminated in 1997, when the Southern Baptist Convention announced a formal boycott, spurred, in part, by Disney’s refusal to block Gay Days. (The church lifted the boycott in 2005.) Would Gay Days 2022 mark a return to that divisive time? “There is definitely an added significance this year,” Tom Christ, who helped […]

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Documentary Critical of Disney, From the Disney Family

Mr. Iger has also left the company. Ms. Disney tells viewers that she decided to make the film because she was frustrated and angry at his “curt” response to an email she sent him in 2018 about theme park employee pay. He declined to comment for this article. Ms. Disney has faced claims of discrimination […]

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Is Disney the Met’s Fairy Godmother?

“Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts,” which opened this month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a classic holiday exhibition: family-friendly, frothy, not asking for much heavy lifting. And like that of the holiday season itself, its promise is a little overstated. The exhibition traces, often in granular detail, the disparate […]

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Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Opens to Tepid Box Office Receipts

Steven Spielberg’s rave-reviewed remake of “West Side Story” arrived to an estimated $10.5 million in North American ticket sales, a feeble result — even by pandemic standards — that added to alarm in Hollywood about the theatrical viability of films that are not visual effects-driven fantasy spectacles or new chapters in ongoing franchises. But there […]

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