Hollywood Special: Death of a Franchise with Christian Toto - In The Tank #429

Hollywood Special: Death of a Franchise with Christian Toto - In The Tank #429

The Heartland Institute’s Donald Kendal and Jim Lakely are joined by entertainment writer Christian Toto for our annual end-of-year look at movies, TV, and pop culture.

This was, by even the accounts of the suck-up mainstream entertainment press, a disastrous year for Hollywood.

Disney Studios set records for box office bombs, and delivered them one after the other in 2023: “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantummania”; “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”; “The Little Mermaid”; “Elemental”; “Haunted Mansion”; and “Wish.” Those productions alone, predicted to make billions, instead racked up at least $1 billion in losses for the once-infallible studio.

And then there is Warner Bros., whose DC Comics Cinematic Universe tried its best to keep up in the bomb department with “Shazam!

Fury of the Gods”; “The Flash”, “Blue Beetle”, and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.” Those movies combined to nearly wipe out the studio’s $1 billion profit from its smash hit “Barbie.”