In my far-distant youth, a “Mickey Mouse idea” would be a way of disparaging someone’s notions and hopes, belittling and ridiculing it to prevent it from being realized. In spite of that somewhat dubious association, Ted Gioia has a Mickey Mouse idea to save Disney, and it might just work … except that the studio seems to think their most famous creation is somehow tainted and disreputable:
Do aging sports stars still get hired to shake hands with tourists at Las Vegas casinos? It happened to Joe Louis. It happened to Mickey Mantle. What a sad final chapter to such illustrious careers.
Once they were great. Now they merely greet.
I fear this is Mickey Mouse’s fate today. He does his meet-and-greet routine at the theme park, then goes home to a trailer park in Orlando. Here he gripes to Minnie that he deserves better than this Walmart-ish door-tending gig. She tells him to stop whining and take Pluto for a walk.
Ah if I ran Disney I’d bring Mickey Mouse back from exile. I’d give him a movie contract, a record deal, and a tickertape parade down Main Street USA.
I’d tell the shareholders: Watch out K-Pop Demon Hunters, the Mouse is Back!
But that’s just my dream, not reality. This little fella is just as charming as ever, but his corporate overseers don’t want what he has to offer. Disney is pushing ahead on hundreds of projects right now, but none of them involve Mickey Mouse.
Back in 2002 there was some buzz about a new Disney full-length animated film entitled The Search for Mickey Mouse. This was a big deal. It would be the studio’s 50th animated feature film, and release was scheduled for Mickey’s 75th anniversary.
But the studio pulled the plug. Two years later, Disney tossed a few cheese scraps in Mickey’s direction via a 68-minute reunion with Donald Duck — but they sent the film straight to DVD after a few showings in a Hollywood theater.
It was a low-budget affair. But the theater was packed to the brim, and audiences loved the movie. That didn’t matter. The studio had other priorities.
That was our beloved mouse’s last moment of glory. Since then Mickey has appeared in a 6-minute cartoon — back in 2013 — and been granted a few on-screen cameos in low-profile short films. I’m tempted to say That’s All Folks as I contemplate Mickey’s prospects for future, but Bugs Bunny owns that line. So I’ll simply note that this is what extinction looks like when it happens onscreen.
Why is he getting cancelled?
Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse (Source)
Not long ago, Mickey Mouse was the most famous storytelling character in the world. Time magazine claimed that he was better known than even Santa Claus. Everybody in the world recognized his face — not even Winston Churchill or Greta Garbo could make that claim.
Mickey’s exile is, of course, due to his problematic copyright status. Some aspects of Mickey are entering the public domain, and even though Disney could protect his more updated modern look, it’s possible that some outsiders might earn a few coins from a Mickey Mouse resurgence.
Disney would rather go mouse-less than let that happen. That’s a bad decision — a triumphant return of Mickey would go along way toward charming audiences and fixing Disney’s tarnished reputation. He is, after all, the most beloved character in the company’s entire history.
In two years, Mickey Mouse will have reached the ripe ago of one hundred. That would be a great time for a comeback — not just for Mickey but for the whole Disney brand.
The problem with Disney is that they’re out to make money first, and telling good stories falls by the wayside. What made K-Pop Demon Hunters shine is that they inverted that. Everyone thought it would be a flop. Who in their right minds would even consider a story based on Korean mythology and culture becoming a hit? So they told a good story. In the current dessert wasteland that is our entertainment industry, that was such a breath of fresh air that people flocked to it.
Disney used to know this. Walt himself did it–“Snow White” should, by all accounts, have ended Disney. A retelling of a fairy tale in a cartoon was a stupid idea. But Walt set out to tell a good story, and people loved it. The Golden Age was similar. “The Little Mermaid”, “Aladin”, “The Lion King”, and the rest (which are included is up for debate) were good stories, and because they were good stories they made money hand over fist.
The problem is that telling a good story is a risk. Sometimes what you think is a good story doesn’t resonate with people, and you lose your shirt. Sometimes it’s a good story, but up against impossible competition–“Master and Commander” would have been the biggest movie of the year and launched a franchise had it not opened against “Return of the King”.
So Disney is playing it safe. Their goal isn’t to tell stories, but to make money. So they take established franchises, which minimizes risk, and milk them for every dollar they can wring out of them. They don’t care about Star Wars or Marvel or even Mickey anymore; they only see these as resources to be exploited as fast as possible, to extract as much money from people as possible. And thus we get bland, pointless, soulless, nonsensical garbage that bears the name of a franchise people were once loyal to, because bland and soulless is safe and the executives think they can keep us dopes paying for the franchise forever.
It’s not just Disney either. I’m a huge Tolkien fan, but I gave up on the movies after the first “Hobbit” movie (good idea to integrate it into the LOTR story, very bad execution) and have no interest in “Rings of Power”. The same process happened here–the executives decided that the LOTR franchise was what people were paying to see, rather than the great story that Tolkien told, and thus we got a totally nonsensical abomination that uses the same names but assassinates the characters and butchers the setting. The franchise was considered a safe way to make money, so no real thought was put into the story.
If Disney wants to save Mickey they have to take the risk of telling a good Mickey Mouse story. Until they do that, Mickey is going to continue to be merely a rotting zombie, a corruption of his former self, one it would be a kindness to put down.
Comment by Dinwar — March 15, 2026 @ 11:12
Disney, like all the Hollyweird outlets the last few years, not only puts money ahead of story, they also put [Critical Drinker voice] THE MESSAGE ahead of the story. Way, way, way ahead of the story.
Comment by Nicholas — March 15, 2026 @ 13:36