Just when it seemed like Disney had finally caught a break with the soaring success of Inside Out 2, leave it to some higher-up to put his foot in his mouth and rain on their parade.
The sequel to the beloved 2015 hit has been earning rave reviews and raking in the dough at the box office, a much-needed win for the Mouse House. To say Disney has had a rough go of it lately at the box office would be an understatement. Films like Lightyear, Strange World, and the live-action Little Mermaid remake have drastically underperformed, resulting in hundreds of millions in losses. Even the Marvel machine has been sputtering, with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels failing to live up to expectations.
Amidst all the doom and gloom, Inside Out 2 has been a rare glimmer of hope. The film opened to a stellar $155 million and is on track to add another $100 million in its second weekend, becoming 2024’s highest-grossing film so far. Pixar’s still got it! Upcoming releases like Deadpool & Wolverine also have a shot at putting up some impressive numbers and helping stop the bleeding for ol’ Mickey and friends.
But now a controversial video has surfaced that threatens to steal the spotlight from Joy, Sadness, and the gang. Disney now finds itself doing damage control thanks to some extremely ill-advised comments from Senior VP of Business Affairs, Michael Giordano. In an undercover video released by notorious right-wing activist James O’Keefe, Giordano can be heard saying that Disney discriminates against white male job candidates.
“Certainly there have been times where… there’s no way we’re hiring a white male for this,” he apparently told one of O’Keefe’s “reporters”. Hoo boy. I’m sure the Disney PR department just loves cleaning up these kinds of messes. Look, this goes without saying that, to be fair, we don’t know the full context of what Giordano said. I get that companies are trying to diversify their workforces and that’s great, but if this is true and the background context doesn’t really give Giordano’s words a different meaning, this surely isn’t the way to be “inclusive” — it’s just morphing a human right into a fad you are desperate to lead.
Rumor has it that Disney has told Giordano to take a “leave of absence” while they sort out this whole mess. Giordano has now deleted his LinkedIn page in the wake of this brouhaha. According to his now-defunct LinkedIn profile, he had been working at 20th Television for a whopping 10 years before this scandal erupted. Maybe he can land a gig at Project Veritas – I hear they’re always looking for disgruntled execs with loose lips and a penchant for self-sabotage.
There are also speculations that “Giordano,” the video, and the said LinkedIn profile could be fake since this particular Disney executive is strangely absent from social media, with his LinkedIn profile only existing in snapshots some people allegedly took to create these before and after posts.
As for the Mouse House, the studio is yet to address the disastrous video that is going viral on X (formerly Twitter) and has already been boasted to near global exposure after Elon Musk shared the post.