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These aren’t fun times for billionaires, even though their number keeps proliferating along with their numbers — there are now at least 17 documented “super billionaires” with assets of more than $100 billion. Still, Elon Musk’s Tesla dealerships are being torched, Jeff Bezos’ newspaper is under siege, and Mark Zuckerberg is trying to suppress a new book titled Careless People.

Even Larry Ellison and his son David are having trouble closing their Paramount deal as new interlopers and random Trump bureaucrats intrude. It’s no wonder that Billions, the TV series, ended its run.

Walt Disney, for one, would have been exasperated by the issues overtaking the mega-rich today and, given the environment, might never have greenlighted Snow White — details below.

Whenever Hollywood hit troubled times in the past, two or three Medici-like billionaires would start writing checks and be warmly welcomed into the community. Even flakey Howard Hughes won applause...

Updated: There has been another round of content removal from Disney+, this time in the Emea region, which consists of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. More than 120 titles have been taken off this week, primarily Disney Channel original movies and vintage Disney live-action films, as well as a few series, including Zeke and Luther, Pepper Ann, So Random and the first three seasons of Nat Geo’s Genius and ESPN/Nat Geo docs.

According to sources, the takedowns were a result of a library title review. There have been several content purges at Disney+ over the last year amid cost-cutting, most notably the removal of a slew of original series last May.

Here is a list of movie titles that are said to be gone from Disney+ in Emea, compiled by Drew Ryan.

A Tale of Two Critters

America’s Heart and Soul

Angry Sky (ESPN)

Babes in Toyland...

I think Walt would be grumpy.

This is the week when the media celebrates the Magic Kingdom’s 100th birthday, but Walt Disney were around today, I think he’d cringe at the state of guild negotiations, fights with politicians and jumps in theme park prices (or streamer fees).

Having gained immortality for entertaining kids, he might still agonize about the major new commitment to sports betting made through ESPN, a Disney asset.

As one of the few people still around who actually spent time with the shy and media-averse studio pioneer, I found myself reflecting this week on those topics that Walt liked (and disliked) talking about.

I’m a fairly good note-taker, and as such I can report precisely what he was excited and angry about in December 1965 – one year before he died. Although he looked a bit weary and struggled with a chain-smoker’s cough, he had...

Clifford the Big Red Dog was born in a series of children’s books, the first of which was published in 1963. In the decades since, the adventures of the scarlet canine mascot-hero have been spun into three popular PBS Kids TV series, a live musical, video games, and the 2004 animated feature “Clifford’s Really Big Movie,” which was adapted from one of the TV series (and did very little business). All of which is to say that unlikely as it may sound, the new “Clifford the Big Red Dog” is the first really big Clifford movie. So what does that mean?

It means that the film retains some of the benign humanistic qualities of its source, but that it has also been shoved into the knockabout slapstick high jinks paradigm of such CGI-critter-meets-live-action comedies as “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Garfield: The Movie” and the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” films. Most...

Disney has shared a new trailer for their upcoming Disney+ streaming service and it’s over 3-hours long! I don’t know if you want to spend over three hours seeing what Disney+ has to offer when it launches, but you have the option!

Disney+ also posted all of the films and TV shows coming to the streaming service on a super long Twitter thread, which I included below the trailer. As you’ll see there’s a ton of stuff that will be available that will make Disney fans happy. Gargoyles and several other classic 90s animated series are among them along with a lot of old weird films that have been pulled out of the Disney vault.

If you don’t want to watch the trailer or scroll through the Twitter feed, I shared the full list of titles for you. Check everything out below and let us...

Clean-cut Disney actor who co-starred with cats, dogs, chimps and Herbie the Love Bug

Mickey Mouse apart, the figure who most represented Walt Disney Productions in the 1960s was the clean-cut actor Dean Jones. Jones, who has died aged 84, starred as the bumbling, somewhat bland, hero in five entertaining kiddie movies with animals in the title: That Darn Cat! (1965), The Ugly Dachshund (1966), Monkeys, Go Home! (1966), The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (1968) and The Love Bug (1968). The last of these starred not strictly speaking an animal, nor an insect, but a white Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of its own, ostensibly owned by the unsuccessful racing car driver Jim Douglas, played by Jones.

Happily, Herbie – as the cuddly, anthropomorphic auto is christened – helps Jim win an all-important race through the Sierra Nevada mountains against his nemesis, the villainous Thorndyke (David Tomlinson) in his sleek Italian Thorndyke Special. Jones, who did...

Anyone who saw a lot of kid’s movies in the ‘60s and ‘70s remembers Dean Jones. He was always a likable presence and a welcome sight, especially in the Disney family-friendly sort of films he excelled in such as The Ugly Dachshund, Blackbeard’S Ghost , The Love Bug, Snowball Express, The Million Dollar Duck, That Darn Cat! The list goes on and on and it’s hard to believe he was 84! He was always so young-looking, sort of the Dick Clark of the movies! Dean Jones was 84 and had Parkinson’s disease.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

“Dean Jones, the affable actor who starred in such classic Disney family comedies as That Darn Cat!, The Love Bug and The Shaggy D.A., has died. He was 84. Jones died Tuesday of complications from Parkinson’s disease in Los Angeles, publicist Richard Hoffman announced. Jones’ film grosses exceeded $960 million, Hoffman noted. The actor...

Dean Jones: Actor in Disney movies. Dean Jones dead at 84: Actor in Disney movies 'The Love Bug,' 'That Darn Cat!' Dean Jones, best known for playing befuddled heroes in 1960s Walt Disney movies such as That Darn Cat! and The Love Bug, died of complications from Parkinson's disease on Tue., Sept. 1, '15, in Los Angeles. Jones (born on Jan. 25, 1931, in Decatur, Alabama) was 84. Dean Jones movies Dean Jones began his Hollywood career in the mid-'50s, when he was featured in bit parts – at times uncredited – in a handful of films at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer In 2009 interview for Christianity Today, Jones recalled playing his first scene (in These Wilder Years) with veteran James Cagney, who told him “Walk to your mark and remember your lines” – supposedly a lesson he would take to heart. At MGM, bit player Jones would also be featured in Robert Wise's...

Walt Disney passed away December 15, 1966, and in the decade that followed, the Walt Disney Company struggled to define itself. Should the company stay beholden to Walt and his vision, asking themselves what Walt would do, or should they take the opportunity to try something new? The decades that followed Walt’s death were a mix of trying to recreate old magic and experimenting with new genres and styles.

Good – Bedknobs and Broomsticks

In Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Disney was returning to a tried-and-true formula, one that had worked beautifully in Mary Poppins. The screenplay was based on a book series by an English children’s author, the story of a magical woman and the children under her care. Mary Poppins’ director Robert Stevenson helmed the project, which combined live action and animation. Robert and Richard Sherman, the team responsible for Mary Poppins as well as numerous other classic Disney songs, wrote the music and lyrics.

The guillotine was a device developed during the French Revolution and was used in carrying out thousands of executions. It consisted of an upright frame from which a sharp blade is suspended. The blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, quickly severing the victim’s head from their body. In 1964, the Aurora plastics company, famous for their series of best-selling monster model kits, produced a 1/12th scale model of an actual working guillotine complete with a little victim whose head could be lopped off with the flick of a switch. Though tame compared with some items in popular culture today, parents groups at the time complained that it was warping the young minds of future baby boomers but the toy was cool and proved to be a hit. Warner Brothers studios jumped on the brief ‘Guillotine Craze’ bandwagon the next year with the juvenile horror film Two On A Guillotine,...

Memoirs Of A Geisha star Mako has lost his battle with esophageal cancer at his home in Ventura County, California. He was 72. The Asian-American actor, who was Oscar nominated for his portrayal of submissive engineer Po-Han in The Sand Pebbles in 1966, died on Friday. Brought up in Japan by his grandparents while his parents were studying in New York, Mako joined his mother and father when they were granted US citizenship. He studied architecture before joining the US Army in the early 1950s and became passionate about acting while performing in military shows. He became a naturalized American in 1956. After his Army service, he enrolled at the Pasadena Community Playhouse in California and studied to become a professional actor. The Sand Pebbles, which earned him an Academy Award Best Supporting Actor nod, was his first film. His other movies include The Ugly Dachsund (1966), The Green Hornet (1974), An Eye For An Eye (1981), Seven Years In Tibet (1997), Bulletproof Monk (2003) and Pearl Harbor (2001). His impressive TV resume includes appearances in Wonder Woman, I Spy, Hawaii Five-O, Kung Fu and The Streets Of San Francisco.