When Disney Rejects a Dying Child's last Wish....

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Disney has been relative free from bad PR moves the last decade more or less. In fact beyond them firing and then a year or two rehiring James Gunn to direct Guardians of Galaxy 3 ; the company hasn't had anything bad hit. Well the missile just landed and its gaining steam as Disney is likely taking a HUGE hit off this one. Because in no way will the company be able to spin this one. Not with what we have seen given the terrible response they did.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/feat...x6a-story.html

Fo

ur-year-old Ollie Jones' favorite superhero was Spider-Man, before he died. His father, Lloyd, wanted to honor his son with the famed wall crawler's image featured on his tombstone.

The Walt Disney Company rejected that idea, according to an article by The Sun, an English publication.

Ollie passed away in December due to a rare genetic disorder, leukodystrophy, which affects the neural anatomy of a person in a variety of ways.



After Ollie passed, Lloyd, 36, tried to purchase an etching of the superhero for his son’s gravestone, but due to copyright, his request was denied, The Sun reported.

Disney explained in a letter to Lloyd that it did not want the character associated with death — a policy Disney claimed had been the case since Walt Disney’s lifetime, The Sun reported.

Ollie’s funeral procession was led by a person dressed as Spider-Man, and the “Webhead” was featured on Ollie’s coffin as well, The Sun reported.

The Sun article basically expanded on it. In fact lets mock this bullshit reply with some comical facts.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/944145...e-ollie-jones/

A representative from The Walt Disney Company’s permissions department wrote: “We extend our sincere condolences. If we played a small part in Ollie’s happiness we are honoured.

“Generations of fans have responded to our characters with the same wonder and delight that Ollie did. In fact, many believe the characters to be real.

“We have striven to preserve the same innocence and magic around our characters that brought Ollie such joy.

Innocence being that he slapped his wife years ago in a comics scene , helped let his then wife make a deal with a devil and so forth. I mean we can go on for more instances . Your characters as a whole have killed , been killed , worked alongside villains and did more Non-Innocent things in comics and films.

Yet a kids tombstone , nope THAT IS A LINE ...WE CAN NOT CROSS !

“For that reason, we follow a policy that began with Walt Disney himself that does not permit the use of characters on headstones, cemetery or other memorial markers or funeral urns."

Disney then explain this image and link that has a faux gravestone image of Walt Disney with the park logo ?

http://www.mousesteps.com/extra-feat...te-decorations




So basically a kid who loved the character , who fought bravely like the heroes he idolized is told after his death he can't be honored that way. What a sack of horse ****. Hold on I'll let a lot of us sum up our feelings for Disney right now.





Honestly the company should do the right thing , someone should contact that family to apologize. Allow the headstone and make it as a company after this. Hell go even further and have Holland appear as Spider-Man with family.

Hopefully this stays in the news and reporters question this at San Diego Comic Con so Disney can respond better.

[MajorHoy]

Actually, I agree with the Disney stance of not wanting their characters' images on gravestones.

Once you let one person do it, you then have hundreds of people DEMANDING the right to do so, even taking Disney to court due to the precedent of one kid's gravestone.

No, the only exceptions to something like this might be the creator of a specific character. Otherwise, they really have to say "no" to something like this.

[JackDaw]

So basically a kid who loved the character , who fought bravely like the heroes he idolized is told after his death he can't be honored that way. What a sack of horse ****. Hold on I'll let a lot of us sum up our feelings for Disney right now.

The kid..sadly...will not be affected by this at all.

But (of course) the parents feelings should be taken into account.

And actually I think they probably were...I think Disney (an organisation that I don't particularly admire but respect their PR expertise) will not have made this decision without giving subject careful thought.

I think one issue may be the one identified by MajorHoy. Or a slight variant...if Disney give permission for one set of parents to use trademark tastefully, they might find it much, much harder to refuse a tacky memorial in the future. (Easier to have a blanket ban, rather than say to one particular set of grieving parents: "Yes, we allowed other parents permission...but we have to refuse you permission because your specific proposal is completely tasteless".)

[SUPERECWFAN1]

In 2006 Disney allowed parents to have a Winnie the Pooch gravestone made for their child after they at 1st was gonna block it. Then in 2014 DC at 1st refused a gravestone of the Superman S symbol for parents of a murdered 5 year old child. They backed off and quickly issued a statement in FULL SUPPORT OF IT. In fact lets look at how a company SHOULD approach a situation like this.


https://time.com/2970048/superman-lo...morial-statue/

We are honored by the relationship that our fans have with our characters, and fully understand the magnitude of their passion. We take each request seriously and our heartfelt thoughts go out to the victims, the family and those affected,” according to a statement from the company.“DC Entertainment uses a flexible set of criteria when we receive worthy requests such as this, and at times have reconsidered our initial stance.”

So to the idiots who issued the PR release to those grieving parents ...I'm gonna type up the next press release that should be done on Monday. In fact no need to thank me but here you go.

"We at Disney are touched and honored by the brave battle Oliver Jones waged against a terrible disease. He echoed what his hero Spider-Man stands for and we will allow his gravestone to have his hero placed there after careful thought and apologize for this situation to the family."

[daBronzeBomma]

The title appears to be misleading.

Where does it say that this tombstone image was the KID's dying wish? It reads as though it's the dad's idea.

Look, I can't (and never want to) imagine the overwhelming pain of losing a child, but this is one of those rare situations where I can see the soulless corporate giant's point of view. It is an unlicensed use of an image that belongs to them. They can make an exception if they choose to, or they may not. Whether or not the ensuing P.R. is worth it is entirely up to them.

I feel bad that the kid's brief life is being reduced to his love of a fictional character that never loved him back. Not where the focus should be.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

The title appears to be misleading.

Where does it say that this tombstone image was the KID's dying wish? It reads as though it's the dad's idea.

Look, I can't (and never want to) imagine the overwhelming pain of losing a child, but this is one of those rare situations where I can see the soulless corporate giant's point of view. It is an unlicensed use of an image that belongs to them. They can make an exception if they choose to, or they may not. Whether or not the ensuing P.R. is worth it is entirely up to them.

I feel bad that the kid's brief life is being reduced to his love of a fictional character that never loved him back. Not where the focus should be.

As someone tried earlier on FB to claim that this means nothing for the child right now etc. I wanna bring up this point.

Children , young ones can build emotional attachments to pets , sports stars , and super heroes. They are young and in the case of Oliver Jones as he was dying he perhaps found this emotional bond to a super hero he likely idolized. Possibly to give him strength and more to fight on. We have seen it detailed before as above the article where DC allowed Superman's symbol to be on a gravestone ; that child had an emotional young bond with Superman. That was something he was close to and it was to honor him like the parents here want to do.

We have seen how seen how children love John Cena. How many would want to see him as they laid sick...and dying. Because they formed an emotional attachment to him and what they saw. So yeah ...this young child , he was dying and he saw a hero.

And **** this corporate giants point of view. I'm sorry ...its a fucking gravestone for a 4 year old. Its never alright and never will be.

[Jack Dracula]

It would've been possible for Disney to allow the tombstone if the parents signed an agreement to not publicize the event - something I think they'd not want to do anyway.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

It would've been possible for Disney to allow the tombstone if the parents signed an agreement to not publicize the event - something I think they'd not want to do anyway.

It wouldn't have became a public thing (and this has went on for a while it seems) had Disney quietly approved it. They could have avoided this .

[Zero Hunter]

It wouldn't have became a public thing (and this has went on for a while it seems) had Disney quietly approved it. They could have avoided this .

Until some idiot saw it one day and put it all over twitter or instagram. Nothing stays private these days.

Disney did nothing wrong here.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Until some idiot saw it one day and put it all over twitter or instagram. Nothing stays private these days.

Disney did nothing wrong here.

Look above. DC started to catch hell themselves and quickly did a turn back and saw it was better to allow it. If someone saw it , it would get a shrug. People have put pets and more on gravestones over years. Not many would give 2 shits Spider-Man is on one.

Disney made it a big deal. They made themselves look like utter ****. The defense of defending a corporation and seeing folks go..."coooopyright" is nonsense. Anyone can see that this really isn't gonna be a huge case to defense copyright on. Unless the family started creating a **** ton of gravestones .

Of course what did Disney expect ? Little children idolize what characters they have and as the 2006 case tells us this is gonna keep coming up. Just actually get an idea what its gonna be (as DC did) and go from there. Common sense would say , its parents of a 4 year old. They have grieved enough and now were making them grieve more by being outright assholes here.

[Theleviathan]

Methinks both sides of this could've found a compromise. If not, I can't fault Disney here either.

[MajorHoy]

It wouldn't have became a public thing (and this has went on for a while it seems) had Disney quietly approved it. They could have avoided this .

That implies Disney HAS TO allow anybody to do anything they want with their properties.

But they don't have to.

If you don't like that, then you can always buy out the Disney Co. and make it do whatever you want them to.

[CellarDweller]

I am woefully ignorant when it comes to copyright law. I always thought that meant you couldn't take someone else's work and use it to make money.

Obviously, no one is making money off of a grave marker, other than the company creating it, and they would be paid whether or not the Spider Man image appeared on it.

It did make me curious, and I've searched google to see if I could find any other markers like that. I did find this.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

That implies Disney HAS TO allow anybody to do anything they want with their properties.

But they don't have to.

If you don't like that, then you can always buy out the Disney Co. and make it do whatever you want them to.

Nah , having a common sense person there at the company works better. I mean quite honestly the company fucked up major PR wise with this. Seeing NY Post and other media literally call them to task for it has been enough.

Disney as a company can do wrong. It happens ..major companies can **** up. We can call them out when they do. The whole..."Must defend major corporation NO MATTER" is silly.

[CellarDweller]

Perhaps the monument maker pays a licensing fee?