When you 'Wish' upon a sermon: Is there a religion ghost in the latest Disney flop?

Anyone who has been paying attention to the pop-culture marketplace during 2023 knows that even the most secular business analyst would be tempted to think that the Walt Disney Company has done something to provoke the wrath of whatever Supreme Being the Mouse lords are willing to acknowledge.

Marvel at this Inside the Magic headline, if you will: “Disney Chief Predicts Total Disaster for Studio Before End of Year.”

That’s a take that will awaken even the most woke studio boss.

This brings is the the latest Disney box-office flop — “Wish.” At the time I wrote this post, I could not even get any of the “Wish” links to work at the Rotten Tomatoes website — which is never a good sign. If you’re interested in the tomato-past details, see this story at Screen Rant: “7 Reasons Wish's Rotten Tomatoes Score Is So Divisive.”

Is there a “religion ghost” in this drama? Not if you read Variety. This latest Disney nightmare is simply another example of Disney+ being overextended and the American movie audience suffering from lingering COVID-19 fears. Here’s that headline: “Disney’s Bleak Box Office Streak: ‘Wish’ Is the Latest Crack in the Studio’s Once-Invincible Armor.”

Hold that “religion ghost” thought for a moment. Here is the stunning overture of the Variety piece, showing the wider context of the “Wish” crash:

“Wish” misfired in its opening weekend, extending Disney‘s bleak box office fortunes.
The animated musical fable, about the Wishing Star that so many Disney characters have wished upon over the studio’s century-long history, failed to become the de facto choice for families around Thanksgiving. “Wish” opened in third place with a dull $31.7 million over the five-day holiday, a far cry from Disney’s past Turkey Day feasts. Perhaps King Magnifico, the movie’s villain (voiced by Chris Pine), is holding hostage the wishes of Disney executives?
Instead of recapturing the studio’s magic, “Wish” joins a long list of its underperforming 2023 tentpoles, such as “The Marvels,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “The Haunted Mansion,” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

Faithful readers of GetReligion may recall the interview I did years ago with the late Peter Jennings of ABC News in which we talked about the failure of many major news organizations to, yes, "get religion." For a few years, Jennings attempted to get his elite newsroom to take religion news more seriously, with mixed results.

This interview came up the other day when I received a call from columnist Jay Evensen of The Deseret News, who was acting on a research tip from former GetReligionista Mark Kellner.

Evensen was doing a follow-up column on an amazing story about the survival of two girls after a boating accident on Bear Lake in Utah. This drew the attention of Good Morning America over at ABC News. Yes, this was a classic case of "How did you survive this ordeal" syndrome. Here is a slice of the online ABC news text.

Hang on, because we will get to the "Finding Nemo" angle in a moment.

Tiffany Stoker and Tylinn Tilley credit their friendship with helping to keep them alive. ...

The Utah girls, both 13, survived a deadly boating accident that claimed four lives after they swam for hours, singing songs and shouting prayers as they fought exhaustion in the 53-degree waters of Bear Lake.

The teens were on a ski boat with family friends Lance Capener, his wife Kathy, their two daughters and another friend from school. The weather took a turn for the worse, bringing 76-mph winds and 10-foot waves.

The boat capsized, throwing all seven people into the water. All on board were wearing life jackets, but the waves separated Tiffany and Tylinn from the group. The two tried to swim the 6 miles to shore, treading water for hours. They chanted songs and said prayers, even massaging each others' cramps.

The key to Evensen's column, and the sense of outrage felt by the families of these girls, is what appears to a fictional addition to the actual video report featured on Good Morning America (see the video at the top of the post).