Walt Disney Records Legacy Collection: 20 hours’ worth of rarities, 12 books’ worth of history

The Legacy Collection plunders the deepest depths of the Disney sound archive to collect, with unprecedented completeness, the audio histories of 11 classic animated films from each era of the Disney Studios, from Lady and the Tramp and Aristocats to Little Mermaid and the Lion King to Toy Story and Wreck-It Ralph, with one more CD devoted just to Disneyland. Each disc contains the full score of a film from opening to closing credits, unreleased rarities, and bonus material. Then there’s the books.

Each of the 12 discs comes with a rich illustrated book, featuring new art by Lorelay Bove. The books include liner notes in which composers, musicians, animators and other production personnel recount previously untold oral histories of the music that underpins Disney’s animation, unifying it every bit as much as the storytelling and art styles.

There’s more than 47,000 words of liner notes in those pages, and more than 20 hours’ worth of audio on the discs. Listening to the demos in which the legends of Disney music, from Ashman and Menken to the Shermans give notes to singers whose music I’ve thrilled to literally all my life is an incredible experience, like getting in a time machine.

The archivists who produced this collection went beyond all reason and commercial consideration in pulling this together (I know a few of them). They are part of the trufan machine at Disney who gild releases that celebrate craft and pride, spending money that isn’t needed to maximize profit, but is definitely required to maximize art. Disney is full of those people, they’re like the people who joined Google because “don’t be evil” mattered to them. Like those googlers, these Disney personnel don’t harbor any illusions about the company’s complement of people who don’t share their beliefs (or at least, wouldn’t let them get in the way of profits). But they’re there because they believe it and it matters to them. People with a sense of mission make everything worth caring about in this world.

The 20 hours of audio in this collection tell a story. Not the story in the movies — the story of the movies. The story of how successive generations of composers, musicians and storytellers taught their progeny all they knew, and of how their progeny ran with that knowledge, expanding the art, bringing in material from the stage and other studios and pop.

I’ve been listening to this for months, and every so often I’ve gotten the discs down off my shelves and paged through Bove’s exquisitely painted miniatures, illustrations that have a direct lineage to Mary Blair, and let myself experience the work of people who cared about what they did and changed the lives of millions of others in so doing. I’ve owned a lot of Disney records over the years, starting with a scratched and worn-out “Official Album of Disneyland and Walt Disney World,” but nothing,nothing comes close to this.

The folks at Disney music have posted some of the unreleased material for your listening pleasure, and provided us with some exclusive liner notes excerpts.

Here’s “The Chimpanzoo,” a track that didn’t make it into Mary Poppins:


This never-heard Sherman Brothers track was originally part of the “high tea” scene at Uncle Albert’s place. It describes a zoo where the humans are in cages and the animals walk around, wathcing them curiously. Walt Disney cut it to keep it from overshadowing “I Love to Laugh.”

Next is “Le Jazz Hot,” from Aristocats, performed by Ty Taylor:

From The Lion King’s liner notes, producer Don Hahn explains how they cast an expatriate South African singer working as a carhop to feature in the soundtrack:

Lebo M was a South African singer, songwriter who had worked with Hans (Zimmer) on the soundtrack of a few films. He’d been parking cars in L.A. to make ends meet. He was going to be the perfect voice for the film, just one thing: Lebo had disappeared… as if by fate, Lebo dropped by to say hello just hours before we all arrived. Hans pulled him off the street and put him in front of a microphone. There wasn’t even a glass divider to separate him from the room full of engineers and filmmakers eating Chinese food.

Hans played “Circle of Life” for us for the first time. We listened to it and then the directors, Rob Minkoff, Roger Allers and I huddled in the corner to talk. Hans thought he was getting fired. Instead, it was magical and we wanted more. This time they were after a cry in the wilderness that would beacon the animals to Pride Rock in the opening scene. It was a “John the Baptist” thing, only African.” Lebo stepped up and gave his now famous cry that opens the movie and lives on in every stage version of the show since.

Here, composer Alan Menken tells the story of how he discovered his composing partner, Howard Ashman, was dying of AIDS:

Our mission was to create a new animated musical that could sit on the shelf alongside the earlier Disney classics, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty and so many others. In my heart I embraced this mission like I had no other previously in my life… The AIDS crisis was in full bloom, and none of us knew how this could affect our lives and those of our children. And I was unaware of how dark and imminent the cloud was over my dear collaborator, Howard.

At the Governor’s Ball, following the Oscar ceremony, in which we had won Best Song for “Under the Sea” and I had won Best Score, Howard and I sat with our statuettes at the table and he said, “I want you to know I’m really happy tonight. And when we get back to New York we have to talk.” I said, “Talk? Talk about what?” And he insisted that we would wait to talk after we got back.

A few days later he told me that he was sick and all the things I had been trying to ignore and not acknowledge, now came crashing down around me… But, at the time, the thing I most remember was Howard saying, “I’m so glad you won the Best Score Oscar and I’m so glad we’ve had this huge success. Now I know you’re taken care of.”

Finally, Randy Newman explains how he came to write his score for Toy Story:

I believe I was given the job because John (along with Chris Montan) at Disney Music felt that the picture, in that it was the first computer-animated feature, might benefit by having an orchestral score. John told me he liked the music I wrote for Ragtime and for The Natural and the orchestral arrangements I did for some of my songs. I said, “That’s it? And the rest of it? Just crap I guess.” He said, “No, no, it’s all great.” Anyway, he thought an orchestra might warm things up a bit should the film itself end up looking sort of techno and cold. It never did look that way.

“Strange Things.” The Pixar people always emphasize that the characters in their films are adults and deal with adult emotions. That’s really kind of a big idea. I always worry toward the end of their process when the picture is about to lock in terms of story, script and form if it’s funny enough. They never worry about that. They worry about emotion. Whether an audience will feel it. Whether it’s got, I think it’s called “heart.” Well, I can’t say it, but I can do it with music. And, about “heart,” you can’t put it there, like you sometimes can a joke. It’s got to proceed from who’s up there on the screen and if we care about what happens to them. It must be hard to do, but they’ve done it over and over like no other studio ever has.

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‘Star Wars,’ ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ Push Disney Past $5 Billion Mark for First Time

Walt Disney Studios has rocketed past $5 billion for the first time in its history.

To reach those lofty heights, the Hollywood player was powered by three of its top-shelf brands — Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, which released its first film under the Disney banner last weekend with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” That space opera sequel shattered records, setting new high-water marks for a domestic debut with $248 million and a global launch with $529 million. Its debut shot past the records set by “Jurassic World” ($208.8 million domestic, $524.9 million worldwide).

Disney’s previous full-year record was $4.73 billion, which it set in 2013. Warner Bros. and Fox have also crossed the $5 billion barrier in other years, and Universal is the market share leader in 2015 have hit $6.8 billion globally thanks to such blockbusters as “Jurassic World” and “Furious 7.”

In addition to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” other Disney hits this year include Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” ($459 million domestic; $1.4 billion global), Pixar’s “Inside Out” ($356.4 million domestic; $855.4 million global), “Cinderella” ($201.1 million domestic; $542.5 million global), and Marvel’s “Ant-Man” ($180.1 million domestic; $519.1 million global).

Not everything paid off for the studio. “The Good Dinosaur” marks a rare misstep for Pixar, grossing $189.8 million on a $200 million budget.

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Disney Is in Talks to Leave Fusion Joint Venture

Walt Disney Co. and Univision are in talks for Disney to exit Fusion, their joint venture cable and digital news network aimed at millennials that has struggled to gain traction since it launched two years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

Both sides are trying to find a way for Disney to exit by the end of the year, some of the people said. While Univision buying out Disney’s stake is one of the options being discussed, it isn’t the only one, according to some of the people. Fusion was launched in October 2013 as a partnership between Disney’s ABC News and Univision, the Spanish language broadcaster. It was originally conceived as a channel targeting English-speaking Hispanics.

The idea was to give ABC News more access to the rapidly growing Hispanic population in the U.S., while giving Univision—which has seen its audience age in recent years—entree to a younger demographic. Univision handled the content side of the channel while Disney was in charge of distribution and advertising sales. But Fusion’s programming strategy never fully jelled and the network ended up jettisoning the original concept in favor of a channel aimed at all millennials with a focus on pop culture and technology.

The venture, headed by Chief Executive Isaac Lee, who is also Univision’s chief news and digital officer, started out ambitiously. The company, based in Miami, hired a staff of 200 employees and a slate of well-known journalists to work both on camera and online. The strategy was to use the affiliate fees from the cable network to fund the growth of an online media network that could rival the likes of BuzzFeed and Vice to gain the attention of millennials.

However, that also proved to be a hard sell to consumers and pay-TV distributors.Fusion is available in 40 million homes and doesn’t subscribe to Nielsen for television ratings.Its online traffic is roughly 7 million unique visitors in November, more than twice what it had in March, according to comScore.

Fusion lost $35 million in 2014, according to a regulatory filing from Univision this year in preparation for its since-delayed initial public offering. Fusion’s assets were valued at $26.1 million.

For Disney, building Fusion has become less of a priority as of late, especially given the company’s recent investments totaling $400 million in Vice Media, which also targets millennials. In addition to those investments, Disney owns 50% of A&E Networks, which has teamed up with Vice to launch a cable network.

Disney is also concerned that growing distribution for the struggling Fusion network would be a challenge at a time when price-conscious consumers are cutting cut the cord to pay-TV or switching to small, cheaper packages of channels. Disney, which owns ESPN and Disney Channel, didn’t need to be spending its negotiating leverage on a little-watched cable channel, according to people familiar with the media giant’s thinking.

Univision is also eager to part ways with Disney and take control of Fusion, according to people familiar with the matter, as millennial-focused news is becoming increasingly important to Univision’s overall mission.

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Disney’s Bob Iger takes a ‘Star Wars’ victory lap

What is Disney CEO Bob Iger doing to celebrate the record-breaking success of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens?” He’s taking his four children to see the movie — some of them for the second time.

The Iger family planned to head to a local theater on Monday, not a private screening room, so they’d better get there early.

“Star Wars” ticket sales remain strong four days after the American premiere, and the movie is expected to have a long life at theaters.

Igor savored the moment by giving an interview to Bloomberg TV on Monday morning. He used the appearance to announce new box office totals for the movie.

“It’s bigger than big,” he said. “It’s bigger than we thought it would be.”

Disney’s estimates kept creeping up. Later Monday, it said the new ‘Star Wars’ had made $248 million in North American sales through Sunday and $529 million worldwide. Both are all-time opening weekend records.

Of course, the movie was always on track to be a blockbuster. Investors aren’t necessarily surprised that “Star Wars” broke weekend box office records. To some extent “Star Wars” hype is already priced into Disney’s stock.

Shares of Disney (DIS) — and all the other major media companies — have been hammered this fall. Concerns about the cable television side of the business have weighed heavily on the stocks.

Disney fell about 1% Monday.

But right now its movie studio is an obvious bright spot in a complicated financial picture.
Iger led the 2012 acquisition of the “Star Wars” franchise and the rest of Lucasfilm for $4 billion.

He said on Bloomberg that the through-the-roof results for the first new “Star Wars” film “sets this great franchise up for far more value creation over a longer period of time for the company.”

Several other “Star Wars” movies are in the works, “plus two big theme park lands, one in California at Disneyland and one in Florida in Orlando,” he added. “And in all likelihood, there will be Star Wars lands in our other park locations around the world.”

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Disney CEO is totally in love with Apple TV

Amazon, Google and Roku are all battling to win over your TV, but according to the Disney CEO Bob Iger, the new Apple TV tops them all, not only because it’s great for consumers, but also because it’s a win for content creators.

“One of the most important things that the industry needs to do is demand a better user experience,” Bob Iger told Bloomberg in an interview this morning. “The Apple TV box and the interface that it provides is the best user experience I’ve seen ever for television users.”

Watch Bob gush about Apple’s new box below:

It’s not all that surprising that Bob is totally in love with Apple’s new black box, seems how he’s a member of Apple’s board of directors. Despite the close relationship, the two companies still haven’t done any major collaborations.

An over-the-top subscription service on Apple TV for all of Disney’s content, plus a separate package for ESPN (owned by Disney) seems like it’d be a no brainer. Iger didn’t reveal whether such a thing is in the works, but now that the new box is finally out, we think we’ll probably see something big between the companies in 2016.

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Will ESPN drag on Disney or will the force win out?

Disney really needs that force right now as its stock continues to dip amid ESPN controversy.

Despite smashing cinema records over its opening weekend for Disney“Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” investors remain skeptical. The stock dropped about 1 percent Monday; it’s down nearly 13 percent from its 52-week high.

“The proportion of revenues that Disney’s been deriving from its cable nets, including ESPN, has been declining relative to the studios,” Rich Tullo, senior financial analyst, Albert Fried & Co., said to CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Monday.

But Tullo holds a new hope for the mega business and says that even if Disney cable nets go down as much as 3 percent, the decline will be offset by growth, which he pegs at “between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, owing to Star Wars and other films.”

Investors got skittish about Disney earlier this year, after the media company admitted to a loss in cable subscribers.

Some market watchers are not convinced that the films will float Disney past the cable issues.

“What I’m trying to get through is this huge amount of noise around the entire ESPN issue,” said Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Shares Investments. “Because it represents so much of Disney’s free cash flow.”

But bulls believe investors do not have much to worry about.

“Most consumers are not rational; they’re lethargic. ESPN is going to be just fine,” said Larry Haverty, associate portfolio manager at Gabelli Multimedia Trust, on Monday. “We’re talking about a consumer brand here of unprecedented strength: ‘Star Wars,'”

While the franchise has had a successful weekend thus far, it won’t open in the Chinese market until January; analysts consider that opening an important measurement for the movie’s overall success.

“With the Chinese government as a [Disney] partner, it’s going to do everything it can to protect the franchise and to generate cash flow, and I think that means cracking down on piracy in China,” Haverty said.

O’Leary not confident that the Chinese market will take to the film in the same way Americans did. “The franchise may not have the same sticking power,” O’Leary said.

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An Interactive Map Of The Wireless Service In Disney’s Magic Kingdom

Of the four major wireless carriers, (AT&T T +2.94%, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile)Sprint had the worst overall performance rate in the Disney park in three-day test of the carriers’ signal strengths and upload and download success rates in the Most Magical Place on Earth. The study, which was conducted by Global Wireless Solutions—a wireless network analysis and benchmarking company—found that AT&T had the best service in the park, followed by Verizon. T-Mobile managed the grab the third spot in the rankings.

Click and drag to move around. Scroll to zoom. 

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USC Class Gives Students Inside Look at Disney TV Animation

Class Gives USC Students Inside Look

Disney Television Animation wants to make sure there’s a steady stream of talented animators in the industry pipeline who may one day come up with the next “Gravity Falls” or “Star vs. the Forces of Evil.” So it has sponsored a course at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

The Master Class Character Design Workshop was taught by former Disney animator Caroline Hu and featured weekly speakers from DTVA’s large bullpen of showrunners and creators. It took the students from the inception of their big idea to their big pitch. The course just finished for the fall semester. “What I’ve been doing is very collaborative. (At the beginning of the semester,) the students come up with their ideas. They pitch it in front of the class, every class, as it develops, and they get feedback from each other every class. And they get feedback from the Disney people. It’s been very collaborative, and because of that, everybody’s projects have been improving,” says Hu.

Speakers included “Gravity Falls” creator Alex Hirsch, “Wander Over Yonder’s” Ben Balistreri, “Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero” showrunners Sam Levine and Jared Bush and the team behind the DVTA’s upcoming new series “Tangled”: Shane Prigmore, vice president, creative affairs, Disney Television Animation, and Chris Sonnenburg, executive producer and supervising director, among others.

STYLEMAKERS“The class is centered around developing a show for television,” explains mid-term speaker Sonnenburg. “What most students think it is to develop a show for television or film is very different in reality. There are a lot more elements and politics and collaboration and notes and on and on that you have to deal with when you’re trying to develop something, or pitch something, or get ideas across. I think this is a little bit of the voice of experience. We’re here to share our actual experiences of moving from conception to development to green light, and understanding those steps.”

It’s not the first time USC has collaborated with Hollywood studios for classes, according to Tom Sito, chair of the John C. Hench Division of Animation & Digital Arts at USC. “The USC film school’s had a relationship with studios like Disney going back to the ‘30s. As a matter of fact, I think around 1935, Walt Disney used to come down and hang out at the campus and interact with the students,” he recalls.

So when DTVA approached USC about sponsoring the course, the school was on board. “We’ve done work in the past with studios like Nickelodeon and DreamWorks and so on, and the Disney people wanted to do something with us, specifically on the idea of television and online content because that’s the new thing nowadays,” says Sito. “It’s a chance for our students to interact with professionals in the industry and get that creative edge from being at a research university in the center of Hollywood.”

Prigmore, a DTVA exec as well as a showrunner, says he wishes there were more classes like this. “It’s an amazing step forward in educating the world about the medium of animation and production, and the process of making a show: how to make deadlines, how to work with other people,” he explains. “A lot of students have an idealized idea of what it’s like to work for an animation studio. But if you want to get into animation, it’s hard work.”

For student Matthew Torres, the experience has been invaluable. “It’s an incredible opportunity. Listening to Alex Hirsch and these guys, I’m just sitting there with my mouth open,” he says. “They are just so encouraging. I don’t think there’s any way I can write down what I’m learning from them. There’s so much insight and so much knowledge.”

A complete, professional pitch is the ultimate goal for students in the class. “The object for the students is that they’ll be able to present professionally to all the executives who come to hear their pitches,” explains Hu. “I think some of the students had ideas that were outside of the Disney world, and I told them ‘That’s fine, but I think you need to consider that this is another challenge for you. You’re not pitching to Fox, or somebody else; you’re pitching to Disney. You have to pitch to a specific studio for this project, so you’ve got to have something that’s going to be family friendly. You’re not going to have mayhem. It has to be within certain parameters.’ Whether Disney picks it or not, they did something from beginning to end.”

It’s not clear yet if the course will be offered again in the future, but Sito says he hopes so. “This was sort of a trial run to see how this works out. We certainly had enough students. We actually had to turn students away,” he says. “This class, specifically, is for people who are very interested in a full-time job in the animation industry. A lot of times some of the more interesting ideas for TV shows started as school projects. In the past, TV series like ‘Johnny Bravo,’ ‘Powerpuff Girls’ and ‘Dexter’s Lab’ began as student films. So seeing the next big talent come up is exciting when you can spot them. Getting encouragement and professional experience from a group like Disney is invaluable to emerging students.”

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How Disney Broke The Box Office Mold With ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

force awakens 1

Talk about a gamble that’s poised to pay off. Disney buys Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012. The studio looks to recharge the Star Wars film franchise, which hasn’t seen a sequel in 10 years, coupled with the challenge that the last trilogy left a bitter taste in fans’ mouths. But here Disney stands with the all-time domestic opening record for Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens at $238M, and the current 2nd best global launch at $517M behind Jurassic World.

Tron-Legacy-Movie-Poster-10And out of all the release dates on the calendar, the studio chooses the weekend before Christmas, a time usually challenged by weather, holiday activities and travel. Distribution executives expressed their concern earlier this year: Why re-launch a franchise that was born in the summer, in the winter? There’s only a finite amount of time to make a lot of money when kids are off school. In fact, Disney already knew about the difficulties of the pre-Christmas frame: In 2010, at the same point in time, they tried to re-launch their dormant 1980s Tron property and fell short with a $44M opening after a year’s worth of promotions and a $170M production cost.

Disney originally staked out a May 2015 date for Force Awakens but two years ago when it looked like Abrams and Lucasfilm required more time, they moved the film to this weekend. “We needed more time to get the film in perfect form. It had to set the stage for the other titles,” one Disney insider told Deadline.

“We saw the opportunity to create an event since people are off from work and school, along with the fact that there was an absence of tentpole competition,” said Disney distribution chief David Hollis on why this weekend was the right one to launch a new Star Wars trilogy.
Fans Line Up To Watch "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" In New York CityWith 96% of all moviegoers saying that Force Awakens either met or exceeded their expectations, coupled with 88% saying that they’ll pass good word of mouth along to at least five people per Rentrak PostTrak, Episode VII is expected to make at least $500M before Dec. 31. And financial analysts believe Disney got away with a cheap acquisition price for Lucasfilm, with the next trilogy and spinoff films sets to rake in $25B in revenues.
In the days ahead, the momentum for Force Awakens will be fueled by a combination of repeat moviegoers and newcomers (or latecomers). Many predict the film will beat Jurassic World‘s 17-day pace to $500M, and the 36 days the Uni title took to hit $600M.
star wars the force awakens“We have this big pre-holiday burst despite the distraction level from shopping and travel and this will transition in the next couple of weeks where moviegoing is the primary activity that most people will be doing,” adds Hollis who also praised the exhibition community this morning for responding to audience demands by adding more showtimes. As a four quad film, Force Awakens played everywhere from the big cities to small towns, although non-Disney box office analysts noticed the J.J. Abrams title over-indexing in the west given the abundance of tech and fanboy audiences. The next two weeks are like several Fridays in a row. And although most kids will go back to school after January 3, there’s still a good sum on recess through the Martin Luther King Day Jr. holiday frame which most distributors count as the end of the holiday season. At this point in time, Deadline projects that Force Awakens can have a run at No. 1 all the way until either Jan. 15 when Ride Along 2 opens or Jan. 29 when Kung-Fu Panda 3 debuts.

Star Wars Celebration 2015When discussing the success of Force Awakens, Hollis called out to the Disney marketing team led by president Ricky Strauss and EVP Asad Ayaz who ran point on the two-year-plus campaign. They are the unsung heroes behindForce Awakens. When it came to re-energizing the Star Wars fan base, the point can be argued that Disney provided a bigger promo push for Force Awakens than 20th Century Fox did with any one of the prequels from 1999-2005. Aside from any presentations for the film at Disney’s D23 conventions, the studio stoked fans with a Star Wars Celebration on April 16, trotting out Abrams and the cast along with a teaser for next December’s spinoff film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Another is planned for this year, as well as a European convention in London. Fan excitement was seen at the San Diego Comic-Con when the masses followed Abrams and the cast after a Force Awakens panel to a special outdoor San Diego symphony orchestra performance of the Star Wars music.

Friday, September 4 was designated a Star Wars toy day, aka ‘Force Friday,’ when all the merchandise for Force Awakens dropped. This was preceded by a toy unboxing day broadcast on YouTube across several global time zones. Force Friday was the catalyst for driving Star Wars merchandise to $3B this year, per analysts’ estimates, with another $5B projected for 2016.

jeep cherokeeGlobal promo partners  for Force Awakens include FCA USA auto group (Jeep Cherokee, Dodge), Duracell, HP computers, Subway, General Mills and Verizon. Castmembers canvassed late night with visits to Jimmy Kimmel Live and Conan, but taking turns on The Tonight Show. ABC’s Good Morning America hosted a week of Star Wars interviews followed by coverage on Live! With Kelly and Michael. iSpotTV estimates that Disney spent $26.3M across 2K-plus TV spots on 46 networks. Co-branded commercials from 19 brands generated $68.1M in TV ad value, with iSpotTV also reporting that the estimated media ad value for Force Awakens stands at $93.6M.

Premiere Of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" - Red CarpetSome media reports have mentioned that the total global P&A on Force Awakens is less than $100M, but that figure is highly suspect for a tentpole that cost an estimated $200M, especially when you take into account the PR stunts mentioned above. Couple that with the fact that Disney threw the biggest movie premiere in Hollywood history, closing down two blocks, taking over three theaters (the El Capitan, TCL Chinese and the Dolby) with 3,500 guests being served food by chef Wolfgang Puck. In addition, Disney sent the cast to the European premiere in London, Harrison Ford to a special Sydney event, and Oscar Isaac and Lupita Nyong’o to a Mexican fan screening.

star wars covergirlAnother feat Disney can relish is the fact that they successfully rebooted the series with a female lead — the character Rey played by British newcomer Daisy Ridley — likely expanding the female fanbase, particularly for future installments. After Friday saw 63% guys turning up, the next two days had more women attending, repping 42% of the audience. Disney believes the percentage will even out over the film’s run, especially since women gave Force Awakens an A+. Historically, women haven’t been a huge part of the original trilogy’s audience, nor were they a dominant share of the prequels. Disney licensees were expanded to target young women with cosmetics (“The Dark Side” mascara by Covergirl), jewelry (a Stormtrooper necklace at Kay Jewelers) and a clothing line at Forever 21.

So with a domestic opening of this size, has Disney set the bar so high that no other title will ever surpass it?

“No,” answers one rival distribution chief. “At $238M, Force Awakens is only 14% higher than the opening weekend of Jurassic World. Records are meant to be broken. I mean, the fact that the all-time record opening record was broken twice in the same year, it’s like, wow. That’s pretty cool.”

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Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal begin using metal detectors at theme parks

In a sign of how jittery the nation has become about terrorism and gun violence, Orlando’s major theme parks on Thursday added metal detectors as a security precaution.

Walt Disney World placed walk-through metal detectors in front of all four of its theme parks. Universal Orlando began using wand-style metal detectors in an area leading into its parks and nightlife district. SeaWorld Orlando also began using wand-style detectors.

The safety measures extend outside Orlando. Disneyland and Universal Studios in Hollywood, Calif., are also using the devices.

Security in general has been a major concern following recent deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. On Wednesday, the federal Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin saying it was “especially concerned that terrorist-inspired individuals and homegrown violent extremists might be encouraged or inspired to target public events or places.” It warned people to expect more police and more stringent security at large gathering places.

The apparently coordinated decision at theme parks seems to be “really kind of a destination statement of, ‘Look, we’re ensuring all our guests traveling to Orlando experiencing the parks, we’re going to try to provide the safest environment possible,'” said Scott Smith, an assistant hospitality professor at the University of South Carolina.

Disney World — where a man was arrested last week after trying to enter the Magic Kingdom with a handgun — also said Thursday that it would discontinue the sale of toy guns. New rules also include a ban on costumes for visitors 14 and older, even at Halloween parties. It is unclear whether people can still wear them at Disney races.

More deputies and security guards have been visible at the resort lately. Specially trained dogs have been patrolling key areas. On Wednesday night, police dogs checked the outside of monorail trains before the doors closed and left the Transportation and Ticket Center.

The movie theater at Disney Springs where Thursday’s premiere of the new “Star Wars” movie was taking place also was using metal detection.

“We continually review our comprehensive approach to security and are implementing additional security measures, as appropriate,” Disney said in a statement.

The random scanning of visitors didn’t seem to affect late-morning lines at Disney’s Epcot, where they were of typical length for the holiday season.

Universal spokesman Tom Schroder said the decision to try metal detection was not driven by a specific threat. “We want our guests to feel safe when they come here,” he said in an email. “We’ve long used metal detection for special events, such asHalloween Horror Nights. This test is a natural progression for us as we study best practices for security in today’s world.”

Universal uses the wands at its bag-check area, which has been moved from a hub area closer to where people exit parking garages.

SeaWorld said in an email it would be “enhancing security measures for the busy holiday season.”

Asked about the additional security, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that Sheriff Jerry Demings “has regularly called for enhanced law-enforcement visibility along with additional measures to promote safety for our residents, visitors and tourists during the holiday season. In light of the recent attacks, our awareness and vigilance remain a priority.”

Many theme-park visitors welcomed the changes.

“I’ve been kind of concerned with the domestic terrorism and some of the attacks that have been happening on soft targets like movie theaters,” said Tim Harden, 24, an Orlando graphic designer. “Just going to the parks, I always thought about that in the back of my mind.

“I think the metal detectors are a reasonable precaution. You’re going to wait in lines all day long, so what’s one more line?”

Terrorism is not the only security concern for entertainment venues. There have also been many mass shootings that weren’t politically motivated, including one in 2012 at a Colorado movie theater.

The move caught the attention of gun-control advocates.

“Now, families can’t even go to ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’ to escape the realities of gun violence in this country,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, in a statement.

Metal detectors have become more common for general security reasons. Travelers have walked through them at airports for years. Major League Baseball has begun requiring them for its games, and they are also used for Orlando Magic games.

Six Flags theme parks put up metal detectors, most of them after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, at the main gates. In 2004, Disney World experimented with metal detectors at its entrance but did not make them permanent.

Earlier this year, Universal put up walk-through metal detectors in front of a few rides to make sure that people don’t bring on items such as keys and cellphones that could fall out and injure people.

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