Disney Negate SAG Actor’s Strike With Unique Red Carpet at Haunted Mansion Premiere to Instant Backlash

Disney made it clear a few days ago that the SAG-AFTRA actor’s strike would not have an impact on the Disneyland-based world premiere of their new Haunted Mansion movie. This seemed to be a very bold statement considering the onset of a strike would mean that the ensemble cast, which includes Danny DeVito, Owen Wilson, Rosario Dawson, Jamie Lee Curtis and more, would not be able to attend the event. While that has all come to pass, the show did go on with the cast being replaced by the unique sight of the likes of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Maleficent and Cruella De Vil walking the red carpet for the launch of the movie.

Having the premiere at Disneyland certainly helped out in ensuring the red carpet event was not shut down, as having plenty of characters within the park to call upon allowed Disney to negate the potentially empty occasion. However, it was announced that there would be no interviews with director Justin Simien or anyone else at the event. You can see some of the videos from the event as shared by Variety on their Twitter account.

While this was seen as a stroke of genius by some, many did not exactly see it as a good thing as can be seen in the comments of the above posts. From calling Mickey Mouse “a scab”, to calling shame on Disney following recent comments made by CEO Bob Iger in relation to the strikes and the “unrealistic” goals of both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the premiere could yet backfire on Disney in a big way.

Related: Rosario Dawson Unveils the Secrets of Haunted Mansion in Behind-The-Scenes Tour

Haunted Mansion Opens As a Box Office Underdog This Summer

The timing of Disney’s release of Haunted Mansion as a summer blockbuster is one that maybe seems a little off, as surely the film would be more suited to a Halloween audience, especially considering the wave of blockbuster movies all releasing within a short space of time and many movies struggling to pick up the same kind of attention they would have a few years ago.

Haunted Mansion will be following this weekend’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and will have big competition from Barbie, which opens next week. While the trailers for the movie have suggested that Disney have learned from the problems of the Eddie Murphy movie of the 00s, it is still going to be an uphill struggle for the movie to find its place in the release line-up.

One of the movie’s stars, Jamie Lee Curtis, jumped in on the hot topic of AI in Hollywood, which has been a big factor in the strike that is now in place. Speaking with Collider ahead of Haunted Mansion’s release, Curtis said:

“The visual effects level is all technology. Once you know how to do that, it’s science. The performing part is not science, which is why AI will never work because emotions are real and they come from human beings. They don’t come from machines. So to watch beautiful actors do that kind of work, under those circumstances, is something very impressive to me.”

Haunted Mansion will be released in theaters on July 28.