Ben Shapiro is making good on a recent pledge.
In the days surrounding corporate Disney’s allergic reaction to new Florida legislation restricting gender and sexual preference instruction from K-3 classrooms, the DailyWire founder casually mentioned that his company would start making kids’ content as an alternative to “woke” Disney.
It wasn’t just a flip comment.
Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing, who co-founded the conservative media shingle with Shapiro in 2015, announced Wednesday at a company town hall that it will “invest a minimum of $100 million over the next three years into a line of live-action and animated children’s entertainment on its streaming platform.” He said Daily Wire kids’ content will start appearing in Spring of 2023.
It’s too early for programming details, but Daily Wire said Eric Branscum and Ethan Nicolle of “VeggieTales” and The Babylon Bee will lead kids content development.
“Americans are tired of giving their money to woke corporations who hate them,” Boreing said. “They’re tired of giving their money to woke media companies who want to indoctrinate their children with radical race and gender theory. But they want to do more than just cancel them. They want alternatives. The Daily Wire is giving them those alternatives.”
Boreing teased the town hall topic by tweeting: “The magic has left the kingdom. It’s time to build new things we can believe in.” Video of the entire meeting is below:
Before its passage, Disney chief Bob Chapek initially had a tepid response to what critics call Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill — which passed and was signed earlier this month — then reversed course after a vocal protest and staged walkout by employees. With that, Chapek and Disney adopted a more aggressive opposition stance.
“Florida’s HB 1557, also known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, should never have passed and should never have been signed into law,” read the statement, posted on the Walt Disney Company’s Twitter page March 28. “Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to acheive that.”
This is not the first time The Daily Wire has stepped into the middle of a Disney politics-of-culture controversy. When Disney canceled “Mandalorian” star Gina Carano for posting mainstream conservative views on social media, Shapiro announced that Daily Wire was launching into filmmaking — starting with a multi-picture deal with the former MMA star. Their first attempt, “Terror on the Prairie,” releases this summer.