One of the most startling brand misalignments in recent history would have to be Disney and Ryan Murphy.
For those unfamiliar with Murphy or his work, Ryan Murphy is an openly gay producer whose shows most frequently showcase sexual deviancy and demonic/occultist themes.
His first successful series was an FX drama about a pair of plastic surgeons called Nip/Tuck that was notorious for its explicit sex scenes. Murphy was interviewed for a documentary while the series was still in production in which he expressed his hope that his legacy would be making it “okay” to air a specific sex act on broadcast television (which, at least under the law, has stricter rules about content than cable TV).
Murphy produced Scream Queens for Fox broadcasting, which featured graphic decapitations and discussions of necrophilia in the family hour.
Murphy produced the demonic American Horror Story for FX, which frequently featured BDSM themes and other deviant behavior.
Murphy left FX for Netflix, where he went on to produce Monster, about cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Hollywood, which delved into unsupported celebrity gossip from the “golden age of Hollywood,” “outing” supposedly closeted homosexual actors and actresses from the 1940s and ‘50s. Here again, he insisted on explicit sex scenes and nudity, saying, “It’s actually important to the show that you see the sex … It’s important that you see it happen in real time in the show because the point is to see this thing that was unseen and considered unseeable by the public.”
Disney executives apparently are attracted to that type of work for their young audiences. They looked at this body of work and decided that’s the direction they want to take the historically family-friendly company, because in 2023, news outlets reported that Disney would be hiring Murphy away from Netflix as soon as his $300 million development deal with Netflix ends.
Already we are seeing what this will mean for families with small children who subscribed to Disney+ because they were promised a safer streaming environment.
Next week, FX will be debuting the new Ryan Murphy-produced TV-MA (Mature Audience)-rated series The Beauty, about an unethical entrepreneur who develops a sexually transmitted treatment that bestows physical attractiveness but with lethal side-effects.
Bear in mind that Disney owns FX, and in coming weeks will be shutting down the Hulu streaming service (where Disney has hitherto streamed its more adult content) and migrating the Hulu catalogue over to Disney+. That means that this series, with its nightmare-inducing poster art, will also be available on the Disney+ streaming service, right alongside Bluey and Toy Story.
Walt Disney, the visionary founder of Disney studios believed that “Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children.”
Sadly, current Disney executives appear to be committed to poisoning those young minds with explicit, deviant sexual content and dark occultist themes.
If you would like to voice your concerns about the direction Disney is headed, go to https://help.disneyplus.com/feedback to leave your comments.
It doesn’t matter how strong or robust Disney’s parental controls are – the kind of content Murphy is notorious for creating does not belong on the same platform as Mickey Mouse.
