Is Disney losing the magic?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 October 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As Disney celebrates its 100th birthday this month, a series of recent flops and gargantuan acquisitions has left people asking whether the shine is beginning to wear off. Plus, we look back at the studio’s past - including the time when Donald Duck dressed up as a Nazi.
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Guest: Ed Potton, Arts Commissioning Editor, The Times.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Get in touch: storiesofourtimes@thetimes.co.uk
Clips: Walt Disney Studios, Bloomberg, Rotten Tomatoes, Piers Morgan Uncensored, Talk TV, Walt Disney Productions, NBC, CBS.
Music: Be Our Guest/Disney/Walt Disney Records, You’ve Got a Friend in Me/Randy Newman/ Walt Disney Records, Let It Go from “Frozen”/Multi Language Medley/Walt Disney Records, When You Wish Upon a Star/Cliff Edwards/Pinocchio (original motion picture soundtrack), Arabian Nights from “Aladdin”/Alan Menken/Walt Disney Records, Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah-From “Song of the South”/James Baskett/Walt Disney Records.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Now here's a theme tune you might recognise. |
| 0:13.2 | This month, Disney is a hundred years old and to mark the anniversary, they've raided |
| 0:18.8 | their vaults and are opening a huge exhibition here in London later this week. |
| 0:29.9 | The history of Disney is a chronicle of huge hits from classics like Snow White, Bambi and |
| 0:44.1 | Beauty and the Beast to Toy Story 1, 2, 3 and 4. |
| 0:59.5 | Despite their successes, the future may not be so secure. |
| 1:05.4 | A series of lackluster releases recently have led people to question whether Disney is |
| 1:10.9 | losing its magic. |
| 1:12.3 | We've had this writer's strike that's been going on since May 2nd here and a lot of projects |
| 1:17.9 | have gotten delayed by that. |
| 1:20.3 | Then there's all this larger cutbacks, you know, Bob Eiger came back to Disney in November |
| 1:25.8 | with the mission of sort of improving profits as part of that. |
| 1:29.5 | He's been cutting costs and has been trimming the film in TV spending. |
| 1:36.3 | It's not the first time the company's been in trouble. |
| 1:39.5 | Will Delve into the secret history of Disney looking at some of its past controversies |
| 1:45.1 | and its recent forays into politics. |
| 1:49.4 | You're listening to stories of our times from the Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 1:53.8 | I'm Manvin Rano, today the Dark Side of Disney. |
| 2:04.1 | So I'm Ed Potton, I'm an arts commission editor at the Times, I write about film and music |
| 2:09.5 | and TV and I was lucky enough to go to Munich for this hundred years of Disney exhibition. |
| 2:15.2 | Now that's not a bad gig. |
| 2:17.4 | Just describe what this exhibition is like because it's coming to London soon so we'll |
... |
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