The Disney/Daily Wire dichotomy in the world of entertainment is shaping up to be an interesting retelling of the David and Goliath story. One company, Disney, has worn out the coattails of a once-storied entertainment company and sucked the heart and soul out of everything that made Walt Disney’s dream great. The other, The Daily Wire, is the new kid on the block and is looking to create that alternate in the entertainment economy where conservatives (and independents and liberals who aren’t woke) can again find common ground in the telling of good stories.

Goliath

Disney, in the role of Goliath, has been in a world of hurt. It has been in a death spiral since its disastrous betrayal of children and families by declaring its allegiance to the LGBTQ agenda and leftist culture war ideas. Disney’s stock has plummeted, its credibility among its core demographic is pot, and nothing it seems to do has worked to turn its image around.

Disney has been low-key politically progressive for a long time, but its egregious pandering has largely gone under the radar until the fatal mistake committed by former CEO Bob Chapek. He declared war against Florida’s parental rights bill. That effectively put a spotlight on the once-politically neutral company, and from March 2022 onward the company has been under a microscope and come up wanting.

Disney was stripped of its special status in the state of Florida and has been in a near-constant battle to gain back its power. A recent audit exposed the depths of corruption that The Walt Disney Company employed by running the local Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID). This audit will likely justify Governor Ron DeSantis’s earlier move to strip Disney of its special protected status.

The theme parks have also taken a massive hit. Parents don’t want to pay an arm and a leg to take their children to the most magical place on earth only to have men pretending to be women take care of their daughters or sons at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, or perhaps show up on a “Gay Day” without knowing.

Ardent lifelong Disney fans were disillusioned too, and what was once forgivable and tolerated wokeness took on a sinister tint. It’s as if the mirror cracked and they could finally see Disney for what it was and where it was going with its content. They don’t want to see woke “Marvels” and further finance the mundane feminist agenda. It’s interesting to note that Bob Iger, the current CEO of Disney, recently disparaged the director of the MCU flop, saying she didn’t have enough supervision because of COVID.

Many audiences refuse to go see anymore animated films because they no longer believe the company puts out content that will harmlessly entertain their children. “Wish,” Disney’s centennial homage to the beloved animated movies that put the company on the map, had even worse box office numbers post-opening weekend. It actually suffered a 64% drop in revenue, the worst since last’s year animated film “Strange World.”

Even beloved franchises like “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” (generally marketed toward an older audience) suffered box-office bombs. Disney, however, continues to double down on its stance and blames poor audience turnout on racism, sexism, and bigotry.

The Disney of today clearly hates its own intellectual property, but it’s also perfectly happy to “modernize” it and deprive it of its heart and soul. The latest example of this folly is the live-action remake of its 1937 “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” They hired an actress to play the titular character who disdainfully declared: “I mean, you know, the original cartoon came out in 1937, and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! Weird. So we didn’t do that this time.”

Disney has since pushed the release date of that particular film to 2025.

Bob Iger is also facing an intense internal battle with investor Nelson Peltz. Along with billionaire Ike Perlmutter, Peltz is using the power of his company, Trian, to take over Disney’s board of directors. Peltz is a conservative who is on a mission to save Disney’s soul from the ravages of Iger and his woke infestation of employees.

Disney and its arrogant ideological executives are folding in on their own hubris like a house of cards.

David

By contrast, The Daily Wire, a conservative media outlet, is taking advantage of this gap in the economy to offer wholesome content for kids through its new app BentKey, as well as interesting and refreshing content for adults in the form of movies that aren’t woke.

The company has set itself the task of making meaningful content that most Hollywood studios won’t touch. In a direct attack against Disney’s wokeness, The Daily Wire has announced that it too will be doing a version of “Snow White” starring conservative podcaster and actress Brett Cooper.

The Wire also recently released a new comedy, “Lady Ballers.” This feature-length slapstick pointedly makes fun of the ridiculous notion that men can magically become women simply by declaring it so. It also points out the ridiculous unfairness of allowing men to compete in women’s sports. This script, in the hands of any Hollywood company, would be burned rather than given life because criticism of the Left’s religion, Marxist gender ideology, is taboo.

The film is actually quite funny. Though its humor is more directed at males, the message is universal. This author was pleasantly surprised.

The Daily Wire is representing the voices of conservatives in a culture that is rabidly against them. We now live in a time when girls’ basketball teams are banned from participating in their own sports tournaments for simply refusing to indulge in the whims of a gender-confused boy and his activist allies.

Even The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site, experienced the two-tiered justice of being conservative in modern American. One of its actors, Siaka Massaquoi, was arrested at the airport by the FBI after attending the premier of “Lady Ballers,” in which he also plays a small part. Massaquoi, who was traveling with his pregnant wife, was brought in shackles on J6 charges before a federal judge. This is a developing story but is indicative of the second-class citizenship that the Biden administration and Democrats have sought to make for conservatives.

The Daily Wire is not alone in standing up to the Disney giant. Other companies (granted, not conservative ones) are trying to fill that gap in the entertainment market to resounding success. According to The Daily Wire, “Sony Pictures Animation, DreamWorks, and Illumination (the latter two owned by NBC Universal) have all seen massive hits in 2023 with ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ ($690 million), ‘Puss in Boots: The Last Wish’ ($484 million), and ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ ($1.3 billion), respectively.” This is in contrast to Pixar’s barely-able-to-recoup “Elemental” and Disney’s “The Marvels” and “Wish” flops. In other words, these Disney alternative companies have beaten the pants off Disney’s latest offerings.

As it turns out, making good, entertaining, non-political content is a winning strategy.