Disney+

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Disney+ Won't Have Song Of The South; Dumbo's Crow Scene Will Be Cut
BY MIKE JONES – ON APR 20, 2019 IN MOVIE NEWS



Disney+ won’t include Song of the South, and Dumbo’s crow scene will be cut. As the race to create the most in-demand subscription streaming service continues to heat up, Disney has quickly become a prominent source of interest for many. The Mouse House has been making some pretty big moves as of late, and their new streaming service (which launches this fall) isn’t immune to those changes.

Disney is currently busy with their acquisition of Fox, paying a whopping $71.3 billion for the privilege and reeling in a lengthy list of titles, franchises, and still in-development projects that may or may not now see the light of day. With the details of that acquisition still being sorted out, Disney then went and bought out AT&T/Warner from the previous four-way joint ownership of Hulu, making them and NBCUniversal its sole owners. The move now makes Disney the major stakeholder in Hulu, taking a 60 percent share of the popular streaming platform. And, as if all this weren’t enough, Disney has been offering glimpses of what potential subscribers can expect from their upcoming family-friendly streaming service.

The latest bit of news to be revealed about Disney+ comes to us courtesy of Boardwalk Times and deals specifically with the new service’s content. Though Disney+ will offer subscribers access to their extensive list of titles, one title Disney fans won’t be seeing on offer is the 1946 Oscar-winning film Song of the South. Disney+ will also cut the Jim Crow scene from the original version of Dumbo.



Song of the South, which takes place just after the American Civil War, has long been unavailable on home video due to its insensitive manner of dealing with America’s slave-owning past and the insinuation that life on a plantation was enjoyable for those forced to be there. The snappy, upbeat "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1947, despite its at-odds nature when played alongside inaccurate depictions of plantation life. Though the film introduced the characters of Br’er Rabbit, Fox, and Bear to the Disney family, who later became part of the beloved Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland and Disney World, it remains a relic of a bygone era. As far as Dumbo goes, the Jim Crow scene has already been cut from Tim Burton’s live-action remake. The original animated film sees the crows help Dumbo learn to fly, but due to their manner and name (Jim Crow refers to America’s period of segregation laws beginning in the mid 1960s), Disney has dropped it.

Some might bristle at Disney’s decision to erase aspects of its history and will instead cite the WB approach (via: @CLXcool) of warning viewers beforehand that what they are about to watch is from another era, but Disney is making the smart choice here. With its recent increase in content, plus its own already monstrous selection, Disney has plenty to offer without having to provide programming that has no relevance in 2019. Some might argue that to remove aspects of or deny these productions is to sanitize history, but the fact of the matter is that history can be found in a myriad of other, much more reputable sources. Family programming should first and foremost always be open and friendly to all.

I wonder if Disney+ will have the Star Wars Xmas special...

[GeneChing]

Multiple Fox Films Getting Axed at Disney
8:22 AM PDT 4/24/2019 by Tatiana Siegel , Borys Kit


Kevin Winter/Getty Images; Getty Images/iStockphoto

Disney studio chief Alan Horn has jettisoned a number of Fox projects from his development and preproduction slate.

After scrapping Fox 2000, Alan Horn is culling projects that were in development before the $71.3 billion deal closed: "They are looking at everything."
Call it spring cleaning, Burbank-style.

Since Disney's $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox assets closed March 20, film studio chief Alan Horn has jettisoned a number of Fox projects from his development and preproduction slate, including the $170 million tentpole Mouse Guard, the Tom Hanks starrer News of the World (to Universal) and an adaptation of Angie Thomas' best-seller On the Come Up (to Paramount).

Also poised for curbside pickup, The Hollywood Reporter has learned, is Ted Melfi's mental-hospital-set dramedy Fruit Loops, which has Woody Harrelson starring. (The project is still officially in the Disney fold, but likely will be put into turnaround.)

Three of the four films came from Elizabeth Gabler's now-shuttered Fox 2000 division (Mouse Guard being the exception). Insiders say Disney is simply culling the enormous influx of projects. Mouse Guard, which was poised for a May start date, was said to be too expensive for a nonfranchise film.

As for why On the Come Up didn’t make the cut, a source says Thomas’ last project, The Hate U Give, lost $30 million to $40 million despite a modest $23 million budget and a marketing spend believed to be about $30 million.

Meanwhile, a number of movies greenlit in late December and early January by Fox film president Emma Watts, who made the transition to Disney, are moving forward. Those include the Matthew Vaughn-directed Kingsman prequel The Great Game, the low-budget witchcraft pic Fear Street and Steven Spielberg's West Side Story.

Likely shooting in the fall is Free Guy — a Shawn Levy-Ryan Reynolds collaboration — and Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. One Fox film that won't be questioned is Avatar 2, which finished shooting last Thursday.

But even some of those green lights are being met with scrutiny. One source says Horn is questioning the apparent plan to have young characters smoking onscreen in West Side Story. "With Fox, we can make movies that right now I say no to. ... We always have to think about the smoking policy. The audience for a Disney movie may not know what they are going to see, but they know what they aren't going to see," the exec said in a recent interview with THR. "There are certain things we just can't include because we'll get letters."

Despite Mouse Guard now being shopped to other studios, Watts' group is not being asked to make lower-priced movies, says a source. Rather, she is being tasked with making larger all-audience PG-13 and R-rated films. Look for the domestic terrorism thriller The Ballad of Richard Jewell — about the security guard at the center of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing — to be among the first Fox green lights, possibly with Clint Eastwood directing.

"We are now just only beginning to see how all this consolidation will change how movies get greenlit and made," says a producer involved with a Fox-developed movie. "They are looking at everything."

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