This year’s Disney Annual Shareholder Meeting was held on March 8, 2007 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The topic of Disney releasing Song of the South was raised by shareholder Carol Koster of the Disney Echo web site. This year’s response from Disney CEO Robert Iger was in stark contrast to last year’s response when the same question was raised. Last year, Iger basically stated that Disney had no plans to bring the movie back. This year, however, Iger said the following:
- “The question about Song of the South comes up periodically, in fact it was raised at last year’s annual meeting which we conducted in Anaheim. And since that time, we’ve decided to take a look at it again because we’ve had numerous requests about bringing it out. Our concern was that a film that was made so many decades ago being brought out today perhaps could be either misinterpreted or that it would be somewhat challenging in terms of providing the appropriate context. Because there were depictions in that film that, viewed in today’s world, might not be viewed as kindly or as politically correct as perhaps they may have been in that time. But we have decided that we would look at it again and it’s being done by our studio and Dick Cook [Walt Disney Studios Chairman].”
The full transcript of the comments by Carol Koster and Robert Iger’s reply has been archived here and I encourage you all to read it. Thanks to Carol Koster for contacting me and bringing up this topic at the meeting. And thanks to everyone else for reporting this news as well. Keep your hopes up! We may see Song of the South released yet…