By For the two of you who aren’t aware, I’m a 6’3 Spanish-Mexican-American Indian. I’ve been waiting forever for a Disney film to explore any part of that culture. I would’ve preferred a Spanish Disney Princess that isn’t Sophia the First, but I’ll take a Pixar film any day. Then Lee Unkrich announced that Pixar was working on a film about Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican celebration of the dead (which mostly involved lots of delicious tamales). Little did I know that we were already heading for trouble.
Disney filed (and then quickly dropped) a trademark for “Dia de los Muertos” which would have given them the license to sell all sorts of products (ranging from candy to videogames) bearing the holiday’s name. After much (deserved) hooplah, Disney realized that “whoa, that’s stupid.” They tried to argue that they don’t want the holiday, but the holiday’s name to protect their property, but they also realized that’s stupid. According to Deadline, they just decided to change the title…which is what they should’ve done in the first place:
As we have previously announced, Disney-Pixar is developing an animated feature inspired by the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos”, the studio said in a statement. “Disney’s trademark filing was intended to protect any potential title for our film and related activities. It has since been determined that the title of the film will change, and therefore we are withdrawing our trademark filing.
I didn’t think they’d just call their film Dia de los Muertos since it seemed like a placeholder. This doesn’t look good at all if they thought for even a second that any of this was okay. Just be creative. What, can’t because of the subject material? Run out of fancy Spanish words? Damn it Disney, just when I thought we were cool.
[via Deadline]