The Ben Mulroney Show - Toronto caught in the crossfire of a violent gun weekend / Moana trainwreck

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

GUEST:  Dr. Heather Hannah / Hillcrest Village BIA Board Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founding Partner of Chatter AI If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Well, happy Monday to each and every one of you listening across the country. You may be listening. There's lots of different ways to listen to this show. I want to break it down. A lot of people are confused. Are we a podcast? Are we a radio show? Are we strictly short little outbursts on Instagram?

The answer to that is yes. If you want short little snippets of the show, that's what you get on social media. If you want sort of longer form interviews, you can go get that on podcast platforms. And if you like my face on YouTube, although increasingly what I'm hearing is video is available on across multiple platforms.

But if you want the entire show, listen on your chorus radio network or you listen to us on the IHeart Radio streaming app. Over the weekend, I was able to go visit my daughter at her summer camp. And it was a glorious day. It was a glorious day. And it was so great to see her. She was with her best friends.

And she is having the best time. And it's a camp that really is quite self-directed. So the girls at the camp get to pick what they want to do and nobody tells them what to do. and somehow the place doesn't burn down. And I got there way too early. And so we had a lot of fun. But then I said to her, I was like, do we have to stay here the whole day? Is it a day of activities?

He said, no, we could do what we want. So I could break you out of this place? I said, oh, yeah, of course you can. I said, well, I'm breaking you out right now. And so grabbed the car. And we made our way to Perth, Ontario. I don't believe I'd ever been to Perth, Ontario. But Perth, Ontario has a main drag called Foster Street.

Gorgeous, picturesque, straight out of a movie. Like, looked like any town USA or any town in Canada. Really, really, really nice. And after running a few other errands, we went there because our last stop had to be to the bookstore. My daughter is a voracious reader. And she reads quite quickly as well. She gets the veracious, the veracity.

from me and the speed, I don't know where she gets it from, but she doesn't get it from me. And so we found a bookshop called Spark, Spark Books and Curios. And I walked in and it was full of books, obviously, but a little concern that the books that she wanted would not be there. I told her before we went in, like, you got to, you got to, you know, pick, just be prepared that they might not have what you want. And we walk in and not only did they have the book she wanted, but the bookstore. owner was even went so far as to go into the discount bin to see if there was one in there that she could sell us at a discount sure enough one of them had like a black dot on one of the pages or something and she sold it to us at a discount and then she recommended another book to my daughter

which she had heard about and we bought that one too so three books in about five minutes and I wanted to give a shout out to this wonderful bookstore and the owner who took such good care of us. Spark Perth. Their website is sparkperth.com. But I asked her, I said, how's business? And she said, it's terrific. Everyone in this community takes care of each other and looks out, looks out for each other. And everyone on this main drag, we all support each other. And that's what you want. That's what you want. You want, you want to go into work and you want to go into your community and you want to feel that people have your back. And you want to feel like that.

is going to be great. And that's how the weekend started in the city of Toronto. Unfortunately, three examples of gun violence reminded us that that is not the reality. That is not the reality. Three gun incidents in three completely different parts of the city. And it started on Friday night at about 11 when three masked suspects opened fire on three men in their 20s, One killed, two injured. Saturday, less than 24 hours later, at 8.12 p.m. Salsa on St. Clair, a festival that was born out of the tumult following the dedicated streetcar line that was put in on St. Clair, the Business Association got together and said, let's do something to revitalize this neighborhood, add character, add community, remind people that this is still a great place and we can rebuild it.

after so many businesses had to close. And rebuild they did. It is thriving. It was thriving. It has been thriving. An exchange of gunfire between two armed individuals in the middle of a crowd

of roughly 13,000 people. Two men killed, four wounded, two firearms recovered, suspects still at large. The festival's final day canceled. And then just a few short hours later, early Sunday morning at about 3.30 a.m. Poulson Pier.

by the Rebel Nightclub, which is in a... So one was uptown, one was midtown, and this one right by the water. Another shooting involving two people exchanging gunfire. One suspect allegedly stole a ride chair vehicle while fleeing, striking pedestrians and cars. Five people hospitalized with serious or life-threatening injuries. 25-year-old Brampton man arrested. We spent a little moment on this guy. He was charged, firearm recovered.

His name is Omar Abdul Singatei. from Brampton. Singate was implicated in a high-profile home invasion and cryptocurrency robbery in Montreal. Now, he pleaded guilty in May 2006. It's July. This was a charge related to a violent cryptocurrency home invasion in Montreal. And his sentencing hearing was scheduled for October. So in a few short months.

So pleaded guilty a few months ago, scheduled for sentencing in October. What's he doing out on the streets? I'm just going to leave that out there like hanging Chad. Let's go back to the one that people are really focused on, although all of them have our attention. For now, let's go back to salsa on St. Clair. As of right now, the police don't know much. So it's very difficult to say with certainty what precipitated this.

I can tell you that there was an exchange of gunfire between individuals and the two firearms were recovered. But as I said, investigators are piecing it all together. This is a very chaotic scene. I think we had something in the neighborhood of 13,000 people participating in this festival, so it's crowded. I mean, just the brazen, despicable quality of this exchange here, the amount of danger to the members of the public, as the mayor commented, is just so unacceptable.

unacceptable, but the police were insisting that Toronto is a very safe city. Okay, that wasn't a real cop. That was Leslie Nielsen from, I believe, airplane. But the point is made because if we stick our heads in the sand, sure, there's nothing to see. But pull your head out and you can see everything I just described, this isn't normal. And when Councillor Mike Cole, who represents the area, stepped in to take the mic, here's what he said. We just want to say how disgusting this is, this gangster violence in a peaceful family festival. We had this for 15 years, no problems.

And to shoot up a festival indiscriminately, these thugs must be caught, no bail, put it away for 20 years. This threatens all of our public events. This has got to stop. Now, for those of you who are not from Toronto, Mike Cole is not a reactionary right-wing guy. I know the man. He's not. He's the farthest thing from it. And when he's saying, throw away the key for 20 years, we're getting to a point where even bleeding hearts have no more blood to give to the people committing the crimes.

I don't care what their motivation was. All I know is at this point, they are feeling very confident to do a targeted shooting in the north of the city, to do a shooting in the middle with a sun still shining with 13,000 witnesses, 13,000 witnesses. And down by the waterfront, a guy who should have been in jail, we got shot, allegedly shot somebody, stole a car, one of them stole a car, and he, hit a bunch of people. This is what's going on. And it shouldn't be this way. I know it's a small town, but it should be more like Perth. There's an update going on, and we will keep you posted on this.

Chief Demq is going to release the names of the two deceased, and he said that they need to look at measures necessary to keep events safe. That means more money. But we've got lots to get to today, including after the break. We're talking to somebody who had skin in the game and who was there. from the Hillcrest Village BIA board. Dr. Heather Hanna joins us next. Hi, I'm Jane Koston, former writer and podcaster for places like the New York Times, The Atlantic and National Review. And now I'm here to hang out with you.

Five days a week on what a day, Crooked's Daily News podcast. That's right. Now who's respected on both sides. Okay, yeah, it's not me. It's probably still just Dolly Parton. Moving on. These days, it's hard to separate what matters from all the noise, especially when the noise somehow also feels like it's made out of knives. That's why every weekday, and I scour the headlines to bring you the stories that matter most to the way you live in just 20 minutes. Listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. We are continuing our coverage of an ever-evolving story here in the city of Toronto.

We're on a beautiful summer day. Right at about 8 o'clock at night, someone, gunfire erupted. Two people ended up dying in front of 13,000 people at the salsa on. St. Clair Street Festival. We're joined now by Dr. Heather Hanna of the Hillcrest Village BIA Board. Heather, thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome. So, I mean, I was not there, but boy, did it look like it was just the perfect night to get people together.

It was a beautiful day. It started at 11 and the weather was cooperative. Everything was lovely. after I finished being a veterinarian I went to enjoy myself so do a little dancing do a little announcing for the festival etc and I was just taking a break in the clinic building literally putting my feet up thinking I've got an hour and a half more to go when that all turned bad it all turned I've seen the videos it's these are are not videos I'm used to seeing in the city of Toronto.

However, and I'm not used to watching it in person. Yeah, yeah. And then obviously, what I saw on video was a massive reaction of cops coming from all directions. Oh, yes, there was plenty of police presence already there and, of course, EMS as well, you know. Yeah. So, you know, that. So, so we can check that. off the list of like, okay, if we're going back and we're doing a post-mortem of what went wrong,

it wasn't in your estimation that there weren't enough cops there? No, there was, there were a lot of cops. Okay, and back in the day... They were up and down patrolling all over. Back in the day, a doctor, we've had many, many street festival, some far exceeding 13,000 people. And this didn't have... I think that's an underestimate, but that's okay.

Yeah. There's still a lot of people. A lot of people. It was a success. I mean, I love the story. that it was born out of the desire to reinvigorate the area after the you know that the the disruption of years of of of you know what's what the city of Toronto does very well uh planning for a few years to build a a street car line that takes you know a decade uh but but reborn straight

uh st clair is and one of the reasons is is this festival and it's it is it in jeopardy now the festival yeah i would have to say any street festival is going to be really re-examined, thought over. There's going to be a lot of decisions that have to be made. There's going to be have to be a lot of thinking first and a lot of information gathering first, but something I think is going to happen. Now, we're learning that the victims have been identified

as 25-year-old Shaquan Kwashi and Caesar Vernaza 20. So, you know, cut down in the first part of their lives. But it doesn't, I don't think somebody wakes up one day and just decides to take a gun and shoot random strangers at a street festival. That is correct. I am sure. Yeah. But they still have that gun culture on their mind. Yeah.

Well, what are you going to do with a gun at a dance party? What are you going to? You know, can you really dance with a gun? Yeah, exactly. You're going there with, you're going there, I think, with one thing on your mind. But to do so in such a public fashion, that to me is the thing that's different. Of course, there's always violence in the bigger your city, the bigger your problems. I get that.

But the fact that somebody was confident enough to do this publicly at what, and in the summer in Toronto, it is still blazingly bright out at 8.15 at night. It's the day. It's the daytime. time. So we had thought that we would close earlier. So, you know, we were closing at 930, used to go to 11 originally. So we had started earlier. We're thinking daylight, you know, it's easier for crowd control and for police to get to move the crowd out, which we need for cleanup after, right, no matter what. And as I said, I just had my feet up just before 8 and thinking I've got an

hour and a half to go and yes. And yes, it was very light out. Yeah. I just wonder, doctor, I wonder if the issue, what has changed that is allowed for this to happen is that whoever is thinking

of doing these bad things is more confident today that they're either going to get away with it or if they get caught, they will if they go to jail, they're not going for very long. possibly that I'm not a psychiatrist but I just find there's

there's been a change in people's politeness or whatever you might think I found that especially after COVID and there's been this glorification of guns you know and now guns they're not supposed to be here but there he is. Yeah.

No, I was told, I was told that, that, this was all going to get taken care of with all the, all the gun bands. That was,

that was, well, yes, except he would have to retrieve all the guns that are already currently out there. Correct.

Correct. And maybe stop the ones that are coming illegally. Correct. Yeah, but talk to me about, like, this must have been

a point of pride for the neighborhood. This was that, you know, when you put something like this together. Yeah. I think it was a great way to show off the neighborhood

The neighborhood is always, this is an area where everybody goes through, if you know what I mean, all kinds of ethnicities over the decades. So it was more Latino several years ago, so it kind of really fit the area. It is less so that has moved down the street. But nevertheless, there is still a large presence that such a festival can be happy and happening, and a lot of people like that kind of music, food, etc. Plus, it's just a street festival that you can attend on a beautiful summer day,

walk up and down, do some activities, eat some different foods. You know, talk to your friends, maybe learn to dance, because we have several dance schools that come, you know, those kind of things. But it's, someone wrote on social media that something like this has, has a way of making the worst-case scenario of self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning that even if the cops do what they've got to do, people will feel it's not safe and they won't return next year. And that in turn will lead to the law of diminishing returns.

And so either it gets canceled on its own or fear will take care of it eventually. Is that how you feel? It's certainly a great possibility. It's already being felt that. way even before this happened. And now, of course, well, this really makes people think that way. So that's a great possibility. I think that's also possible for several other street festivals that people feel that way. They're not all the same, but some of them that attract a fair, diverse and especially younger

crowd, they're more going to have that as a possibility. And that's really unfortunate because, you know, I think big street festivals are always one of the most attractive things that Toronto has. And they were, you know, for this one, especially, it's free and it gives people of all different sorts, age, brackets, ethnicities, you know, of way of coming together and enjoying each other together. And that's really sad if it's going to end from fear.

There are some other issues that it has had just with large crowds and litter and stuff like that. I've never heard of a fast street festival ending because of litter. That's a problem that we can solve. I know. That's a problem that we've tried to solve. And, you know, you get complaints, but it's not going to end it. No. Well, doctor, I want to thank you for joining us.

I'm so sorry that this happened to your community, one that's worked so very hard to pick itself back up after. Oh, yeah. And it's a great thriving little oasis here. It's a great place to live because I live here. And I eat here all the time. and it's great for services and shopping and everything. And, well, it was the quietest ever here yesterday. Well, Dr. Heather Hanna from the Hillcrest Village BIA Board,

thank you very much. And I wish you peace. Thanks. Thank you. When we come back, we're joined by Tony Chapman. We're going to start our conversation with him. How do you solve a problem like Toronto? That's next.

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Always a pleasure. We're talking about this shooting, the string of shootings in Toronto, three different shootings in three different parts of the city on three different days, the 10th, the 11th, and the 12th of July. And that comes on the heels of, I mean, there's all sorts of issues in the city of Toronto. and a lot of times when you're trying to attract people, you're trying to attract business,

you're trying to attract any number of things. People are going to look at the pain points before they decide they want to spend their tourism dollars, for example, in a city like Toronto. Toronto has an image problem right now, I think. It's got a serious image problem. And, you know, the interesting thing, there was a psychologist years ago, Abraham Maslow,

talked about the theory of human motivation. He said the most important thing we strive for is safety and security. We really can't find love, belonging, purpose, self-actualization if we don't feel safe. We feel like we're on shifted sand. If we're looking both ways, if we're scared to get on a TTC, and that's really the situation is happening in Toronto.

Talk to my brother-in-law, he said, yeah, my daughter's going to go to TMU next year, which I still consider Ryerson. Yes. He's got to go by streetcar. I don't know if it's safe anymore. You never heard that five years ago. Yeah.

And now you're going to wake up every day concerned about taking transit in Toronto. I mean, this isn't South Africa, is it? Well, look, but I remember, you know, the boxing day, Eaton Center shooting of Jane Creba, that was a wake-up call for a lot of Torontonians, because prior to that,

they felt, whether it's a feeling or whether it was fact, most people felt that if there was gun violence, it was restricted to certain parts of the city. Now, the pushback from that is, you know, people would say, oh, that's a, that's a very downtown feeling. But the fact is, it came. to where people lived and came to where people lived who didn't who weren't used to it I should say this to me is the same thing because you had one in the north of the city you had one in midtown

again in the daylight with 13,000 witnesses and then you had another one by a by a man who pleaded guilty to a violent home invasion just a few months ago and was awaiting sentencing so I look at those things and I say if they have one thing in common it's the risk of the crime, the risk of doing the crime and getting caught has changed. It's a lesser issue than it was before. And people are, and so this brazenness.

We're talking about how brazen these things are. Yeah, they're brazen because it's not as big of a risk anymore if you get caught. You know, there's an interesting thing that happened in New York years ago. We heard about the whole broken windows. We have to fix the windows before we fix the city. I'm in an LCBO and I saw somebody,

which in the news reports I thought was an anomaly, just walk in. and walk out with alcohol, and they put it in a book. Yeah. I said, what was that? How many times it happened? Several times a day. We're letting crime go unpunished.

You know, when you start doing that, then civil obedience becomes civil disobedience. And what was the last time you were, like, you think 10 years ago, the word shooting in a city was an anomaly. It was maybe a gang war. Gangs going after each other. As you said, it's happening on our streets, crime invasion, carjacking. And, you know, I don't know what the solution is.

Have we got lost control? because if we don't put the people away, what's the motivation for the police force to arrest them? Yeah, well, so I was kicking around an idea earlier today. And this is a provincial jurisdiction that we say, we don't have enough room in the jails to hold them. Okay, so let's look at it like a gradation system. If you arrest somebody for, and they are charged with first-degree murder,

go into that overpopulated jail and find somebody who's in there for a lesser crime. get them out and put the hardened criminal in. Put the guy who's the grade A criminal. And let's just keep doing that. A one-for-one swap, if you're telling me there's not enough room, then let's take out the people who are on the lowest level who stole wine from an LCBO. And if you shot somebody, you're going to be held.

And let's do that until we build the jails. Because that to me is a better, I mean, it's the best of bad options. Since we're always brainstorming you and I. I'd also say we have the great white north. I would put a prison up in the very great white north, make it so there's some employment for people up there that need it. You don't even need fences because like some great prisons, Alcatrazia had to swim to survive.

Just let them go up there and say, listen, this is your prime? Because I think a lot of people would go, is that crime, is that even a week up there, let alone a year or two years? Start making it consequential. Start having people realize that there's a result to my actions. And I love your swapping thing. But at the same time, I think it's just in general, it seems to be that I can get away with almost anything in this country.

And I think that when we start sitting out in society, our integrity line, our ethic line gets pushed out. And we start saying, well, if it's good for them, I guess it's good for all of us. But if you were asked by the city of Toronto to help rehab its image today without changing anything, like, you know, we can, yeah, with the proper marketing, you can convince people that you could sell a ketchup pop. to a woman in white gloves. So how do you make people outside of Toronto feel like things are better here? Well, in the past, you could get away with it because you could just shoot the images you wanted and present them to the world the way you wanted it. But with social media, nowadays, when you put out a promise like that, you're actually opening yourself to being attacked on social media. And it's not hard to attack Toronto and social media right now. The city is dirty. It's not working. It's congested. It needs to get back to what it used to be. And it wasn't that long ago. We were the envy of the world, a multicultural city, and it was booming.

There was cranes everywhere. There's energy. There was enterprise. We still can reclaim that. But it starts again with the broken window mentality. If we don't clean up that sort of even the small, petty crime and don't make it consequential, I think what we're just going to be in a downward spiral. But one of the problems is you've got people who are making excuses. This is not, listen, yes, crime was at an all-time high.

but over the past three years violent crime has gone down or I actually heard someone today from an advocacy group say let's not panic here because yes gun violence has gone up but gun fatalities has gone down

and I said wait a second we're supposed to be happy that the bad guys have bad aim that's what we take away from this and then I pointed out not for nothing I suspect one of the reasons that is in the city of Toronto is because of all the hate crimes targeted at Jewish institutions like synagogues and schools that happened in the middle of the night.

So a lot of shootings at buildings, but not at people. But I said that, that in my opinion was done by design. That was to let the Jewish community know, we know where you are and we've chosen to come at night, but we can come back when your kids are here. When I heard that, in fact, it was organized crying, paying these people to do it and they would get a bonus for filming it and putting on a social media, almost threw up in my cornflicts,

because again, they're saying this is porous. This society is porous. It's easy to intimidate. This is the place to do it. And I think we've got to really, I think you've got to put a stop on this now and push back. Because again, every time that line gets pushed, I think that's a line that's going to be harder and harder reclaim. It's like a war. You surrender that boundary.

It's tough to reclaim it. Yeah, but we surrendered it when we decided that open drug use wasn't a criminal offense anymore. And I don't want to criminalize those people. but I always thought that if we weren't going to criminalize it, we were going to help them. And we did no such thing. So you can smoke meth anywhere you want, but if you're caught having a cigarette,

within nine meters of the entrance of this building, you could get cited for that. I walked out of your radio station last week, true story, beautiful sunny day. It was an hour to a meeting. He said, I'm going to walk to the meeting. Started walking across the street from your building. There was a guy half naked shooting up.

I've never seen anybody show up in my life. It was sickening. And I'm going, how did that happen? Where this guy thinks it's okay at broad daylight on a main street, a Queenskey. No, but you didn't hear? There's dignity in the life that this person shows. That's what we've been told. But, you know, I think we've got to find a way to help these people, not help them with more drugs.

And again, I'm not an expert in it, but I can tell you what we've done for the last two years and three years in the city doesn't seem to be working because it seems to be more open and rampant drug use. And I'm worried about the kids and the people that are walking. that can't defend themselves. Well, we're going to take a break, and we're going to stick a pin in that, because this is not a problem that you and I are going to solve on our own. And instead, I told you so. The live action Moana floundered at the box office.

We're going to talk about how little money it made, and what the heck, why isn't Disney going to learn from their past mistakes? We got that and much more kind of with Tony Chapman when we come back. George Clooney was once asked, what movies, like what's his barometer, for deciding if he's going to try to get the rights to a movie in order to remake it. And he didn't even have to think about it. He's like, if it was a bad movie, I will remake it.

Because if it's got good bones, I will rehabilitate it. I will renovate it. That's what he did with Oceans 11. Oceans 11 was a terrible movie. Ocean's 11, the original, made by the Rat Pack, made by Frank Sinatra and his buddies, was made famously because he just wanted to get paid to hang out with his friends in Las Vegas. So that's what they did. They made a terrible movie and had fun making it.

And somebody needs to tell Disney because they keep remaking movies that the first time around were home runs. They did it with Snow White. They did it with Lion King. And now they've done it with Moana. And Tony Chapman, thank you for sticking around. The people have spoken. They were none too happy with this. Well, it's interesting.

if you follow Rotten Tomatoes, which is really the citizen journalism, the original one, I got 97% approval. This one got 37%. And I don't even know where they found the 37%. It was a complete rip-off to the original movie. And as people said, it looked like it was done on a green screen. The actors are awkward. The CGI was over the top.

And it just missed. And again, I was in packaged goods for years, marketing, helping brands market, line extension after line extension. If it worked once, we can make a cherry Pepsi. We can make a cherry Coke. That works. We can make it clear at Pepsi. That works. And time and time again.

And you eventually cannibalize the soul of your brand. Yeah. And next thing, you know, people don't care about it. Keith's the same way. I said, the Labat, I will not take on your business if you ever do a line extension for Keith. So are you crazy? I said, Keith is 17% of your draft market. But again, they brought out white Kees and then they brought out Keith cider.

And what happened was the last time he talked about Alexander Keyes. Same thing's happening to Disney. It's greedy. It's lazy. And it's not storytelling. And it's blowing up. And you and I talked about it last week. Star Wars. It's a great example of it.

But they've got real problems. You've got the experience in the parks is they're getting knocked for being way too expensive. You've got the, and there are three big brands are the Disney brand, the Star Wars brand, and the Marvel brand. And Marvel is really hoping that Spider-Man, even Spider-Man, that's a Sony movie. But they haven't had a huge home run on the Disney, on the Marvel-Firm. in a long time. The Star Wars front, they're even thinking of retconning,

which, and people don't know where recons is pretending it didn't happen. A whole bunch of their movies and starting fresh with this new, I guess there's a movie coming out with Ryan Gosling, the last Starfighter, I can know what it's called, but, and now, I mean,

if you can't get the movies right, that's where it all started for those guys. But the consumer moves on, you've got to move on with them. Yeah. You know what Disney did so well is they had every seven years their child's aged out and they could bring back the movies for it.

People are not going to continue to grow up with Star Wars unless it's new, it's relevant, it's interesting, and where I am. Same thing's happening with these live. They pulled it off once. They pulled it off twice. They think they can pull it off with every movie. You can't. The reality is some movies just deserve to say, I'm going to hold it off as a one-off,

and people are going to say, when are you going to make it again? Yeah. Versus what you're getting is saying, I don't want to see that brand anymore because you've abused it. You've made it so tiring. of my eyes, I used to feel special about you, and now I feel like he took advantage of me. Yeah, there were too many Star Wars movies and too many Star Wars sort of pieces of IP, and the ones that they were doing, a lot of people thought were too politicized or too woke or too multicultural for the sake of being multicultural. That's one problem.

Marvel's problem was they were just making too many movies and they were burning out and people were, and they weren't good. The quality was going down on every front. But with this, with this, I don't know. Like this movie wasn't even 10 years old. Yeah. Like my kids remember the first Moana. And my eldest, my two eldest, aren't even 16 yet. Yeah.

So what does that tell you? And then if you actually look at the shot for shot, one, the original Moana was saturated with color. It was beautiful. Yeah. This one was like gray scale. It was almost as if Zach Snyder, who made the Batman versus Superman, was in charge of it. I don't know what they were thinking.

So there's a great. fable, they should probably, it's called the goose and the golden eggs. You squeeze that golden oaths so much, and next thing you know, the golden eggs no longer appear, and they're just squeezing it. And that's what they're doing. They're running out a runway. They've got no original ideas. Steve Jaws with Pixar, the first film that they came in, they came back and said, you know,

this toy, this one's not working. He said, throw it out, start over again. They said, we've wasted millions. He said, you're going to go out with a brand. You have to produce a story that matters. Yeah. They don't have a Steve Jobs. They don't have a Disney.

They don't even have a Michael Eisner. What they have is a bunch of people saying, we need to create some. dividends for our shareholders because their share prices under attack. So you squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and next thing you know, people are going to say whatever happened to Disney. And somebody, you know, Netflix will buy it out or some studio will buy it out and just take the library and try to milk that. It is.

To me, it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking because the, look, I would take my sons and I would go, we go to the superhero movies. But then I needed those Moana movies because that's what I would do with my daughter, right? And then the Star Wars stuff, that was really just for me. My kids liked it. They never loved it. And it was disappointment after disappointment.

There's too much stuff that I just don't even care anymore. But that's a metaphor for life. Look at the Apple. Their line extensions. You know, what are they doing different each year that makes you want of another apple? You've got to find innovation, an unmet need. You've got to scratch an it. You're going to make people have an insatiable appetite for it.

And that's when you have a brand. But when you have something that was that way and you just, again, try to twist and turn it, all you're doing is absolutely destroying what you're built. in the first place. But when you are that big, and as you said, you have shareholders who want more and more, I mean, do you have to then, like, do a wholesale firing of a whole bunch of people across multiple divisions and say, and then tell the shareholders, you got to be prepared. We are going leaner and meaner for the next little while before we can rebuild because everything's got to go. That's a tough conversation to have because you have people with an

appetite for quarterly earnings, quarterly dividends. And here's something. Most executive compensation, oh, he made $59 million. It's all based on star. price. So they'll do anything they can, including buyback their stock to engineer the value of their stock. It's not their value of their business. They're just manipulating the stock game. So until all of that changes, what you're going to have is a lot of people just doing these tactics that really again offer no value to the end consumer. And when you take away the currency of your brand and you just spend it time and time again, eventually you have what you have is you don't have a brand anymore. Well, you know, and they just keep coming up with new ways to fail because this movie only

made for its opening weekend a million dollars more than the worst one they did, which was the Snow White remake. Now, the lesson that they took from that was, uh, we're too woke. Like, so let's be less woke. But that's, that's only one of many lessons they should have taken because the first one was like nobody, when the movie is done properly the first time, nobody needs you to remake it. But the content, you know, the rock is the most successful actor in saving franchises, fast and

furious. He's got the record for coming in two or three, four in the sequel and reviving. He couldn't even do that because it's a lousy script. His story still has to matter. You have to people have to walk away going that move me. I feel great. What a great afternoon I spent with my dad. That was fantastic.

I want to see it again. There was no Titanic moment in there that's going to bring people back. People were walking out of the cinema. Now they know that because they do tests. They see it. But they thought with all the marketing muscles and all the everything they had. And again, that's a day. If I'm a Cineplex of the world, I've got to say,

if you don't bring me great content, we're all going to fail. Yeah. And I mean, they, and this company for a while, everything they were doing was a home run. Ironically,

it looks like the one part that's going to do well is, is, I mean, this picks our Toy Story 5 has been successful. But it's the Disney animation that is apparently, Hoppers was very successful.

And they've got a couple more coming that look like the original, right? The original Disney Animation Studios. But now, nowadays with AI, you're going to be able to, like there's kids that are producing quality movies for hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars. And as you're a shareholder, you're going to say to people, we need to be part of that

conversation versus trying to block it. Is Disney going to allow to do that? I don't know. Well, to be continued, we didn't get to all the other stuff that we were going to talk about because, frankly, those two stories were, I think. Box office hits. Yeah, box office hits. Tony Chapman, as always, thank you very much, my friend. Have a great week.

You too.