Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of Roy Disney, has co-directed a new film with Kathleen Hughes that criticizes the way The Walt Disney Company treats their theme park Cast Members. “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales” is executive produced by Abigal’s brother Tim Disney and produced by their sister Susan Disney Lord. It will premiere today at the Sundance Film Festival.
Disney has not yet found a distributor for the movie, but she hopes a streamer such as Netflix or Amazon will pick it up.
“What I bring to this is a memory of who my grandfather was in the 1960s and early 70s, what kind of CEO he was, how he greeted people, how he understood them as partners and not cogs in a machine,” Disney said in a video from Sundance about the documentary.
“It got extremely personal when I got reached out to by a Cast Member in Anaheim and that’s when we knew there was a really important film to be made,” she continued. “Because I don’t think people think about workers at the happiest place on Earth going without food.”
The minimum pay for Walt Disney World Cast Members was raised to $15 in 2018 and is currently $17 for Disneyland Resort Cast Members. The latter will be raised to $18 in 2023. In contrast, CEO Bob Chapek made $34.5 million last year and Bob Iger made $45.9 million.
The Walt Disney Company released a statement saying, “The well-being and aspirations of our employees and cast will always be our top priority. We provide a leading and holistic employment package that includes competitive pay and comprehensive benefits for our cast members to grow their careers and care for their families. That starts with fair pay and leading entry wages, but also includes affordable medical coverage, access to tuition-free higher education, subsidized childcare for eligible employees, as well as pathways for personal and professional development.”
Watch a video of Disney and Hughes talking about the film below.
Abigail Disney is not a major shareholder and holds no management position with The Walt Disney Company, and she has been a frequent critic of the company’s practices in the past several years.
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Good for you I will look for it to view somewhere!
I don’t like that you buried this article at the very end of your endless list of links/articles. This is about our beloved Cast Members who literally bring the magic to us everyday, work hard, for not a lot of pay. I want to see this doc, to see what our CMs have to say and to hear about Abigail’s grandfather, Walt. I hope she gets a distributor.
The story moves down as other stories are posted throughout the day, you probably just came hours after it was posted.