Disney, Coronavirus and recapturing a previously racist audience
Revisiting 80s movies is all the rage right now. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which cost $75 million to make, has already netted over $100 million in theatres worldwide, a welcome result for post-COVID cinema. Other rebooted 80s franchises loom on the horizon with equal excitement like Top Gun, Lost Boys, Highlander, and ALF.
With money to be made, Disney scoured their archives for sleeper hits waiting to be revived. In 1986, one film outgrossed mega-hits like Three Amigos!, Iron Eagle, Flight of the Navigator, and Spies like Us. This feel-good movie tackled social issues while making people laugh. The movie prompted discussions and newspaper articles, and it has endured as a shining example of what well-meaning white people can do when they don’t ask anyone if it’s a bad idea. Produced by New World Cinema in 1986, sold to Fox in 1997, and ultimately landed in the waiting lap of Disney, the movie is … Soul Man.
Soul Man answers the question: How funny would it be if a white teenager dressed in blackface to get into college by stealing a scholarship meant for an actual person of color?
The answer: Hilarious!
In a stroke of luck, Disney had also been looking for ways to revive another classic from its own catalog, the timeless and beloved Disney classic, Song of the South (1946). Song of the South is a live-action/animation hybrid movie that depicts the fun and care-free lives of black ex-slaves in America after the Civil War. One critic, Richard Dier of The Afro-American, said the movie was “as vicious a piece of propaganda for white supremacy as Hollywood ever produced.” The movie has been an incredibly popular and lucrative item in Disney’s arsenal, even netting $17 million on its 40th anniversary re-release. Former Disney CEO Bob Iger once said, “it wouldn’t be in the best interest of our shareholders to bring it back, even though there would be some financial gain.”
But that was before the company thought of pairing this film with Soul Man.
“These two properties fit together like grape Kool-Aid and fried chicken,” said one junior executive while reclining in a bed of cotton candy while doing lines of coke. The schoolchildren on tour that day of Cinderella’s castle noted this was the least troubling thing the junior exec said all morning.
In this new movie classic, Soul Man’s Song of the South, C. Thomas Howell reprises his role of Soul Man, Mark Watson. A now-aged Mark decides to try out for a local play online, but his camera is broken. He gets the role anyway, and only afterward does he learn that the role is Uncle Remus in a stage adaptation of Song of the South. Not to let his grandkids down, Mark does the only thing he can: He dusts off his blackface kit from college, applies his afro sheen, takes his skin darkening pills, and suits up in a pimp costume. With watermelon slice in hand, he takes the stage by storm. Hilarity (and personal growth) ensues.
Upon hearing the news, movie fans said things like “da fuq?!” and “I don’t care if you’re white, black, green, or purple, that’s some funny stuff, right there.”
Soul Man’s Song of the South is set to hit theaters around Christmas 2023.
In other news, the ALF movie production is back on track after temporarily being halted by PETA activists following troubles with method-actor Jared Leto trying to eat a cat on set. Leto has been released from the hospital and expects a full recovery. Both cat and James Gunn are reported to be fine.
Scoop by JJ Moxie