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Complete Headline: Boys can be princesses too! Disney removes gender-labeling on Halloween costumes to make its trick-or-treating attire for 'all kids' Disney has done away with gender-based labels on its Halloween costumes and is instead marketing its vast selection of looks as 'kids' - encouraging children to choose any trick-or-treating attire that appeals to them. The change comes just a month after Target announced that it would no longer be using gender-specific signs in its children's bedding and toy departments, acknowledging that both boys and girls can be interested in princesses and cars.

As Disney continues to reboot old animated favorites into live-action features, the studio is now looking to team with its Into the Woods helmer for a new take on one of its classic musicals. Sources confirm to Variety that Disney is developing a new Mary Poppins musical with Rob Marshall set to direct.

Walt Disney World announced Friday the 2015 holiday season will be the last year for the long-running Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights at Disney's Hollywood Studios. In a post on Disney Parks Blog on Friday, Disney cited upcoming construction for the theme park's new lands based on Toy Story and Star Wars.

DECEMBER 20---A three-time U.S. Olympian whose illustrious running career has included a Nike TV commercial, a swimsuit calendar, and ongoing promotional work for Disney has spent the last year doubling as a $600-an-hour call girl, an astounding secret life that she now regretfully calls a “huge mistake.” Beginning last December, Suzy Favor Hamilton, 44, has worked with one of Las Vegas’s premier escort services, booking scores of “dates” in Sin City and other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston.While Favor Hamilton (seen at right) has used an alias, “Kelly Lundy,” when working as an escort, she inexplicably shared...

<p>As a patriotic and proud citizen of the United States, I have a story to share that has not only impacted my family, hundreds of colleagues, but also current and future United States workers.</p> <p>As I watched the grim faced Disney Executive, it was obvious that bad news was going to be delivered. The dead silence was broken when the Disney Executive made a harsh announcement. All of you in this room will be losing your jobs in the next 90 days. Your last day of employment for this company will be January 30, 2015. Your jobs have been given over to a foreign workforce. In the meantime you will be training your replacements until your jobs are 100 percent transferred over to them and if you don’t cooperate you will not receive any severance pay. Also, if we don’t feel confident that we have captured everything that you do we can, at our discretion, keep you longer than the 90 days until we have captured everything that you do with this job. Don’t discuss this meeting with anybody else in the company. Everybody in the room was appalled at the message. I was completely silent thinking how this was going to affect my coworkers and how I was going to break the news to my wife and children back at home as I was the only person in my home with a steady job. How would I pay for all the expenses that go along with a home, a wife, and children?</p>

Dean Jones, the go-to Disney actor whose films included "The Love Bug," "The Million Dollar Duck," "That Darn Cat!" and "The Shaggy D.A.," died Tuesday, according to his publicist. Jones was 84. The cause of death was Parkinson's disease, according to publicist Richard Hoffman. Jones made his film debut in 1956's "Somebody Up There Likes Me," which starred Paul Newman as boxer Rocky Graziano. The next year he appeared in the Elvis Presley movie "Jailhouse Rock." He also starred on Broadway in such works as "There Was a Little Girl," with Jane Fonda, and the hit "Under the Yum-Yum Tree,"...

At 14-acres each, the additions to the Disney parks in Anaheim and Orlando, Florida, represent “our largest single-themed land expansion ever,” said Iger, speaking before some 7,500 “Star Wars” fans at the biennial convention. He added that the new environments “will transport guests to a whole new ‘Star Wars’ planet, including an (attraction) that puts you in the middle of a climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance.” ... The company released artist’s renderings of the fictional planet, described as a remote trading port.

In the spring of 2015, a nine-year-old boy named Dexter went to Disneyland with his family and found himself deeply unsettled — not by a scary ride or the unpleasantness of waiting in line, but by some of the most unsettling cultural issues of our time: racial and gender stereotypes. Disney, the world’s most prolific purveyor of pink plastic, has a long history of perpetuating gender stereotypes and feeding our unconscious biases, but what Dexter so astutely observed seemed like a particularly acute symptom of a larger cultural malady. .......... Dexter and Sybilla go to The Cathedral School of St....

It's been two days of harsh reckoning for the entertainment industry as long simmering concerns about declining pay-tv subscriptions boiled up in quarterly earnings reports, leading investors to dump shares of media stocks amid worries that a key Hollywood money pot is threatened. The massive sell-off — one analyst called it "the media meltdown" — came after Walt Disney Co. warned investors late Tuesday that profit from ESPN and other cable channels would not be as robust as initially thought because fewer consumers are subscribing to full pay-TV packages. The sell-off continued Thursday as Viacom disappointed Wall Street with weak...

Walt Disney Co.'s stock DIS, -8.73% is on track to suffer the biggest one-day price drop in its history,

Donnie Dunagan became the youngest-ever US Marine Corps drill instructor in 1952 and consequently completed three tours in the Vietnam where he received, in his words, “holes that god did not give me.” What most people do not know is, among his three purple hearts and Bronze Star history, Dunagan is the famous voice of Bambi; the nasally little fawn on shaky legs that we all know, hold dear and often make reference to when referring to innocence on a grand scale. Dunagan held this secret closely during his tenure as a tough and seasoned drill sergeant, but has always...

Walt Disney’s got a lot to answer for.I blame Bambi and all the anthropomorphic drivel that followed, like the Lion King.That unfortunate part of the culture, more than anything else, seems to “inform” the view of nature held by effete urbanites who rarely venture out of doors.So, let me weigh in on the Cecil the Lion controversy.It was just another animal — and the outrage generated by its death is unreasoned, sentimental nonsense.People who claim to “love” animals more than people are emotionally damaged individuals incapable of weathering the difficulty required in a real relationship with something that can talk...

They were supposed to be in Mexico that day, not at the opening of some amusement park. But 7-year-old Michael Schwartner persuaded his parents to take a detour. And then his cousin Christine Vess tripped and skinned her knee. And that’s how Michael and Christine became the very first official guests in Disneyland 60 years ago this week and unexpectedly received a lifetime of privileges. That’s how they were escorted past 15,000 people, how they met Walt Disney, and how they posed with Disney for a photograph beamed around the world.

Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner has spoken, and I’m more confused now than ever before. And that’s saying something. During ESPN’s 2015 ESPY Awards, Bruce Jenner received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. In an introductory speech, video tribute, and acceptance speech that spanned nearly 30 minutes of air-time, the story of “Caitlyn’s” transformation was told. But it was told in an entirely different way than what I expected. It was depressing. Take Abby Wambach’s opening monologue. She began by sounding the call to rally around an issue “not enough of us stand up for.” Okay, here’s the part where she’s going to...

Despite holding the television rights to nearly every sport that anyone wants to watch, ESPN apparently is not the cash cow that it once was for parent company Disney, which reportedly is demanding that the all-sports network slash its budget over the next two years. In Wednesday’s story about Keith Olbermann’s impending departure from the network, the Hollywood Reporter says Disney is forcing ESPN to cut $100 million from its budget next year and a staggering $250 million from its budget in 2017. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that ESPN has lost 3.2 million subscribers in more than a...

New York: A Sikh-American employee at the Walt Disney World in Florida, who was barred from working in view of the guests due his religious appearance, for seven years, has achieved a significant victory, with the company agreeing to end the segregation and accommodate his religious beliefs. Gurdit Singh had been employed as a mail carrier at the popular amusement park in 2008 but was told by his Disney bosses that he would not be permitted to run mail routes visible to park guests because his religious appearance "violated" the company's 'Look Policy,' according to the rights group Sikh Coalition. In a letter...

ORLANDO, Fla. — A day after Disney's Hollywood Studios removed a Bill Cosby statue, Disney's Epcot has removed a Confederate flag that was hanging at the theme park's American Adventure theater. Robert Niles from Theme Park Insider writes: The flag removed from Epcot is not the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia most commonly associated with the Confederacy, thanks to its adoption in early 20th century by the Ku Klux Klan and later revival in the 1950s and 60s by southerners in opposition to the civil rights movement. The flag that had hung in the American Adventure was...

I don’t know anything about how to go about getting people to participate in a boycott of advertisers. However, I think it would be a great idea to boycott ESPY advertisers considering the extreme disrespect Disney / ESPN has shown to real heroes by using the Arthur Ashe courage award for a publicity stunt.

Keith Olbermann is exiting ESPN once again. The television personality, who rejoined the sports network in August 2013, won't be renewing his deal to anchor his ESPN2 program. The news follows a THR report on July 1, noting that ESPN management floated an ultimately unworkable caveat: that Olbermann cease engaging in commentary. "Keith is a tremendous talent who has consistently done timely, entertaining and thought-provoking work since returning to ESPN," the network said in a statement. "While the show’s content was distinctive and extremely high quality, we ultimately made a business decision to move in another direction. We wish Keith...

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner believes women are rarely both funny and beautiful. Speaking with Goldie Hawn at the Aspen Ideas Festival, he said: 'The hardest artist to find is a beautiful, funny woman.' He prophetically added: 'Boy I'm going to get in trouble, I know this goes online. But usually, unbelievably beautiful women - you being an exception - are not funny.' Accordingly, his words have have prompted outrage on Twitter, with thousands of people name-checking comedians such as Tina Fey, Mindy Kalig and Kristen Wiig as examples of the supposedly unattainable formula.