‘Movies about girls don’t work’: Former Disney president was laughably opposed to one of their most successful movies of all time

It’s absolutely bizarre to think that certain people don’t believe in female-led films, but that’s been the case for a while now. And Jeffrey Katzenberg, the one-time President of Disney, was one of said people.

Let’s flash back to Disney animation in the 1980s. The Black Cauldron came out in 1985, and it was a complete disaster for Disney in every way. Disney needed to come up with something good to put themselves back on top, and so they turned to one of the most popular fairytales of all time.

Making The Little Mermaid

This was, of course, The Little Mermaid. The original story is a heartrending tale of love and loss and Disney changed some crucial elements to make it family-friendly. (That’s just what Disney does.) But they also created an intriguing modern heroine in Ariel, the titular character. She was young and naive but she had agency, and she won the heart of her prince in the end.

Disney also created a great female villain in Ursula, the Sea Witch. She was evil, no doubt, but she made evil look and sound so good. Her song “Poor Unfortunate Souls” is a lot of people’s favorite.

The animation, the songs, it all added up to a masterpiece. And yet … Jeffrey Katzenberg thought it would fail. Why? Because the movie had a giiiiiirl as its main character. The Little Mermaid’s director, John Musker, said as much to the magazine El País (per FandomWire). He was told by Katzenberg that “Movies about girls don’t work,” and that The Little Mermaid had no hope of beating Oliver & Company, Disney’s 1988 offering.

Well, to cut a long story short, The Little Mermaid did beat Oliver & Company and became a cultural phenomenon. It made $235 million at the box office, spawned endless merchandise and eventually a popular remake. And yet this wasn’t enough to convince people that “girl” movies made money. Instead, we got stuck in the same conversation year after year after year.

Why do people still reject female-led movies?

Katzenberg isn’t the only Disney big cheese who’s turned his nose up at female-led films. For another and more recent example, look no further than former Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter—though really he’s not the sort of man whose opinion is worth anything.

Perlmutter also didn’t believe that “girls” onscreen made money. During the Sony email leak of 2015, a message from Perlmutter to Sony executive Michael Lynton was unearthed, and it gave examples of female-led superhero films that did badly at the box office. Plenty of male-led superhero films had also bombed at that point, and no one suggested studios should stop making them.

It’s generally thought that Perlmutter is the reason why the MCU neglected its female and BIPOC superheroes in its early years. But now that he’s been replaced, characters such as Black Panther and Captain Marvel are making Marvel millions of dollars.

It’s funny to see how wrong Katzenberg and Perlmutter were, but underneath there’s a sense of frustration that anyone who’s not a straight white male is seen as not worthy of having their story told.