Disney showrunner: "Pirate my show"
And The Simpsons kill a long-running character
This Disney showrunner is telling fans to pirate her series
All because of what Bob Iger said on an earnings call last week. Have you heard of The Owl House? It’s an animated fantasy series created by Dana Terrace that ran on the Disney Channel from 2020 to 2023 It’s currently available to watch on Disney+.
But Terrace is now telling her fans quote “Unsubscribe from Disney+. Pirate Owl House. I don’t care.” Why has she gone scorched earth with her former employer?
Because on an earnings call last week, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed that the company will soon be rolling out user created, AI-generated short form content on Disney+. Iger explained that new interactive features will allow Disney+ subscribers to “create user-generated content and to consume user generated content.”
Terrace, an animator and writer, sees that as an insult to professional artists and the paying public. She mocked Disney on X - writing as if Bob Iger was speaking “’If you pay us we’ll let you make your own content slop! That we will own!’”
Then she spoke to the audience, explaining that you don’t need to pay Disney to make art, “YOU CAN DRAW AND WRITE AND POST YOUR OWN S**T FOR FREE.” Summing it up, “Bob Iger and his ilk are f***ing ghouls.” She also said “”F*** gen AI.”
Are you looking forward to Disney+ allowing you to AI-generate content? Or would you rather watch shows created by professionals?
The Simpsons just permanently killed a long-running character after 34 years
Despite the fact that The Simpsons resets its story every episode, there have been a few notable permanent deaths of its 36 year run. Maude Flanders in season 11, Larry the bar fly last year, and Mrs. Krabappel in season 25 — who by the way, died because her voice actor Marcia Wallace passed away in real life.
Anyway, the show just killed off another one: Alice Glick the church organist. Glick has been a minor character since 1991 first appearing in season 2. She was originally voiced by Cloris Leachman, and then Tress MacNeille.
On Sunday’s season 36 episode, Sashes to Sashes, Glick dies in the middle of a church service, tongue hanging out over her organ. This then serves as the inciting incident for the rest of the episode.
Simpsons co-executive producer Tim Long confirmed to EW, her death is permanent, “In a sense, Alice the organist will live forever, through the beautiful music she made. But in another, more important sense, yep, she’s dead as a doornail.”
Funnily enough, this is the second time they’ve killed Alice Glick. She also did in the season 23 episode “Replaceable You” — but not permanently. Glick isn’t the most famous Simpsons character, but it’s always interesting when the show does anything permanent.
Three brothers found a Superman comic in their dead mother’s attic, now they’re rich
So three middle aged brothers who live in Northern California, whose names have not been revealed to the press for reasons you’ll understand in a bit, lost their mother in early 2020 just before the pandemic.
When she was alive, she occasionally told them she had a collection of “rare comics somewhere.” But according to the Hollywood Reporter, she could never remember where they were and so the boys just assumed it was family legend.
Anyway, after her passing, the brothers waited 5 years to finally clean out her house. But when they went up to the attic, after all these years tucked away among a box of old newspaper clippings, they found them.
The comic book collection was real and in surprisingly good shape and get this, it included a near pristine copy of SUPERMAN NO. 1 from 1939. Their mother had purchased it when she was just 9 years old. Immediately the brothers knew, oh shit we have something very valuable on our hands.
The youngest brother who’s 57 told THR, “It wasn’t like we said, ‘Let’s go find that comic book. It was more, ‘Let’s get that dumpster and just fill it up.’ “
Anyway, they got the comic graded by the Certified Guaranty Company - and it was designated a 9.0 which makes it the best maintained copy of SUPERMAN NO. 1 in existence. So they decided to put it up for auction at Heritage Auctions. And this week it sold for a record $9.12 MILLION DOLLARS, becoming the most expensive comic book of all time
Now you see why they didn’t reveal their names? And to think it was just in a box in the attic for 86 years.
Stranger Things is a flop on Broadway. But things could turn around.
Are you aware that there’s a Stranger Things stage show currently playing on Broadway in NYC? It’s called Stranger Things: First Shadow and it’s a full on prequel, set about 30 years before the TV show. It’s about Henry Creel moving to Hawkins as a boy, and it features teenage versions of Hopper, Joyce, Bob and more.
I saw it earlier this year and thought it was an amazing spectacle, with great performances, but the tone was a bit uneven. Anyway, audiences have not been flocking to see it.
In the last two weeks it’s played to just 75% and 65% capacity. That means 2 things, one, a lot of empty seats, and two, it’s one of the lowest attended shows on Broadway right now.
First Shadow reportedly cost $20 million to mount and $1 million dollars a week to operate. It has only done more than $1 million dollars in weekly ticket sales one time since it opened in March. Basically it’s operating at a significant loss by Broadway standards.
Now all that said, there might be hope around the corner. Because the final season of Stranger Things is about to come out and be a gigantic hit and there could be a halo effect driving fans to Broadway. Also, Netflix is a massive company that turns billion dollar profits each year, so if First Shadow ends up closing without turning a profit, it might not even be a big deal.
Terrace's reaction makes perfect sense when you think about the timing. Disney is asking subscribers to pay for the privileg of creating content that Disney will then own. That's a bizare business model, and her frustration feels justified given how much work went into creating The Owl House profesionally.
It’s frankly disgusting that Iger is intentionally allowing user generated A.I. slop on Disney+. It’s completely the antithesis of what Walt Disney took pride in: art made by people, with actual work, effort, and skills. Not this slop generated by some lazy person’s prompt…