The rise and fall of Disney: how the company found then lost its backbone

<p>Recent storm over Kimmel’s suspension is latest black mark for corporation that has been abandoning diversity and inclusivity</p><p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/walt-disney-company">Walt Disney Company</a> is probably hoping that upon viewing the new trailer for the upcoming <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/starwars">Star Wars</a> film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/sep/22/the-mandalorian-and-grogu-trailer">The Mandalorian and Grogu</a>, audiences feel a swell of nostalgia. No, not for 1977, when Star Wars was fresh and wondrous; after all, Disney didn’t even own it then. Not even for a decade ago, when the company brought the film series roaring back with 2015’s The Force Awakens, still the highest-grossing movie in US box office history. Rather, the trailer, consciously or not, hopes to transport viewers, and presumably profits, back to the halcyon days of … 2019.</p><p>They would probably settle for any time before their <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/22/jimmy-kimmel-show-return-charlie-kirk-suspension-disney">brief but tumultuous suspension</a> of Jimmy Kimmel from ABC became national news. But 2019 would be preferable. That year, Disney’s exercised almost unprecedented box office domination, boasting an astonishing seven of the year’s 10 biggest hits – and an eighth featuring Spider-Man, a Disney-owned character in a movie produced by Disney’s Marvel Studios (but released by Sony). Remakes of Aladdin and The Lion King, sequels to Toy Story and Frozen, two to three Marvel installments (depending on how to count Spider-Man), and a new Star Wars movie added up to around $10bn in global grosses. If the Star Wars movie The Rise of Skywalker landed a little soft compared to its better-reviewed predecessors, even that cloud had a silver lining: the late 2019 debut of The Mandalori