Abigail Disney puts out a documentary criticizing the legacy of her family, after years of outspoken disagreement.
Abigail Disney is the granddaughter of company co-founder Roy Disney, Walt Disney’s brother and the numbers man behind the whole organization. For years, she’s been a loud critic of the company’s practices and goals.
Her new documentary, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” targets Disney as an employer, specifically. It exposes details like pay inequity and the way many theme park employees can’t afford to even rent on their salaries, working for one of the largest companies in the world.” It follows four employees as they struggle to make ends meet in Anaheim, where almost all employment ties back to Disney Company in some way.
“They have gone the way of most every other company in this country. They started with a bigger idea of themselves than that,” Disney said in an interview. “The Walt Disney Co. was better. It was kinder, it was gentler. It was a human company.
“We have lost the plot,” said Disney.
Abigail Disney directed the documentary herself, making it in coordination with two of her siblings and filmmaker Kathleen Hughs. They began the project after a public confrontation on Twitter between Disney and Bob Iger in 2019. She publicized that Iger, then the chief executive of Disney Company, made $65 million in 2018 while Disneyland park employees were living in their cars behind the theme park.
The documentary was released this week in select theaters and will debut Friday on video-on-demand, but has garnered almost no publicity.
“No one’s reached out to me. I’m a little mystified by it, frankly,” said Disney. “I’m happy to talk if that’s what they want to do. I am rooting for them. I love this company. This is a love letter to the company. But when you really, really love something and see it going off the rails, you can’t be silent.”
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