Newsies Star Says Disney Sent Her Mean Reviews After Movie Flopped
Newsies star Ele Keats says Disney sent her mean reviews after the movie flopped. Directed by choreographer Kenny Ortega in his feature directorial debut, the 1992 musical famously bombed at the box office, grossing just $1.2 million against a $15 million budget. To make matters worse, the movie received an onslaught of negative reviews at the time of its release. Christian Bale leads the cast of the musical which also stars David Moscow, Bill Pullman, Ann-Margret, and Robert Duvall.
Despite initially being a financial and critical failure, Newsies found a new audience through its home video release and went on to become a veritable cult classic. It was even later adapted into a stage musical on Broadway, where it was nominated for eight total Tony Awards, with Alan Menken and Jack Feldman winning for Best Score. Loosely based on the newsboys' strike of 1899 in New York City, Disney's movie musical featured twelve original songs with lyrics written by Menken and Feldman, with an underscore by J. A. C. Redford.
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Ahead of the movie's 30th anniversary, Newsies star Ele Keats reflected on the musical in an interview with Insider, revealing that Disney sent her a compilation of negative reviews after the movie flopped at the box office. Keats remembers receiving "all of the horrific reviews for Newsies in the mail" from "someone from Disney." At the time, the actress was already on the set of another Disney/Paramount movie, Alive, and it was "really hard" for her to read all the "painfully mean" reviews. See what Keats shared below:
I got mailed this, like, phone book of horrible reviews, including some personal-attack type of reviews. I think that someone
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