Disney

Okay. So there’s something called a “Disney Day Drinkers Club” (more than 85,000 members!) and their mascot is a trash can called “Binny.” Disney has moved the trash can.

After a debut in the Hawkeye Disney Plus series a couple of years ago, the Echo show starring Alaqua Cox starts January 9th. Other than serving as another link to the Netflix shows with appearances from Vincent D’Onofrio (Kingpin) and Charlie Cox (Daredevil), it’s appearing on both Hulu and Disney Plus, even as those experiences overlap.

Disney just released season 2 a few days ago. Now Marvel has posted a “look into the future” of the alternative timeline Avengers series, featuring a younger Red Guardian, the Winter Soldier, and a car chase.

In his year-end Screenwriter newsletter, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw seeded some new TV rumors while laying out why the spinoff apocalypse is nigh.

TechDirt published a helpful reminder yesterday that the 1928 “Steamboat Willie” iteration of the Disney character will become the people’s mouse on January 1st, 2024. The article also points to a Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain guide for using the early design.

We’re just weeks away from a new year (no, really, I checked), but before the calendar flips over, the MCU will deliver a new season of its animated What If...? series on Disney Plus.

Disney is licensing a bunch of its shows to Netflix, including This Is Us, Prison Break, and Lost, Deadline reports. I implore you all to watch Lost again when it hits Netflix on July 1st, 2024, so that you can agree with me that the finale ruled.

The lawsuit, which was certified on Friday, is “the largest ever certified under California’s Equal Pay Act,” Variety reports.

Even as big advertisers exit, sports Twitter has continued going strong. But now the official Threads account announced that sports/NBA Twitter’s newsbreaker Adrian Wojnarowski “has landed” and is doing a Q&A Friday.

You might have thought Bob Iger returning to Disney would have smoothed things over with the board and investors, but activist investor Nelson Peltz is back baby.

Disney is one on a growing list of companies that have stopped advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter, following antisemitic posts from Elon Musk.

Speaking during the NYT DealBook Summit 2023, he did not blame the actors’ strike and lack of publicity for the film’s performance. Nor did he blame the weird hatred of the film driven by sexism coming from a small and vocal cadre of Marvel fans upset over a film helmed by three women.

Responding to a DealBook question about recent box office disappointments, Iger says, “we need to get more realistic” about what a hit looks like in the streaming age.

How Agatha Harkness: Darkhold Diaries will address the events of WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is anyone’s guess.

The first of three new Doctor Who episodes is about to premiere at 6:30PM GMT (1:30PM ET, and if you’re not in the UK or Ireland, you’ll find the new episodes on Disney Plus now). And after fans watch “The Star Beast,” for the first time, there will be an official post-show podcast (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts) to extend the experience.

The Muppets Mayhem lasted just one season before Disney canceled it. Variety reported today that the show won’t get a second season on the platform.

Disney has already confirmed a Frozen 3 is on the way, but now CEO Bob Iger said Frozen 4 might be “in the works” during an interview on Good Morning America:

Can you make an app that’s good for music, podcasts, audiobooks, discovery, library management, and like 100 other things? That’s what Spotify’s trying to figure out. Meanwhile, Disney is out here trying to eat the entire entertainment business one brand at a time. And trust me, friends: it’s going to be called Disney Plus.

The Captain Marvel sequel has only managed $47 million in its opening weekend at the US box office. That may be respectable for some movies, but as Deadline notes, only two MCU movies have opened under $60 million, let alone $50 million.

The entertainment giant is considering bundling some channels — including the History Channel and Lifetime — with A&E, sources tell the WSJ. Disney owns A&E as part of a joint venture with Hearst.

According to Disney CEO Bob Iger, the company has targeted 2025 to launch a direct-to-consumer version of ESPN as the cable market continues to shrink. In a CNBC interview ahead of its earnings, he discussed the possibility of finding “one or two” strategic partners that could add support via either technology, marketing, or content.

Just ahead of Disney’s quarterly earnings release, CEO Bob Iger made a brief appearance on CNBC, where he shared that the company is “mostly focused now on delivering profitability” instead of increasing subs.

And I say that with love. Disney quietly refuses to host the second-season episode, which, as Polygon writes, lightly touches on gender as a concept.