Glenn Beck — an ostensibly contrite conservative conspiracy theorist and former Fox News employee who now moonlights as a hipster clothing salesman — hates an unmade Disney movie, and he wants you to hate it, too.
Beck recently complained about liberals’ success rate with boycotts targeting corporations, while conservatives do “nothing” with this form of protest. (Not true.) He then expressed his outrage over Disney’s decisions to a) shine rainbow colors on Walt Disney World’s Cinderella Castle to celebrate the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage in 50 states, and b) greenlight a Charles Darwin action movie.
“Boycotts work and we have created a vacuum,” Beck said on his show. “And [conservatives] do nothing!”
The unmade film that has Beck mad is a pitch Disney purchased from Oscar-winning screenwriter Stephen Gaigan (Traffic, Syriana), which casts Darwin (the English naturalist renowned for his landmark contributions to evolutionary theory) as an action hero in a family-friendly adventure saga. In his earlier days, Darwin embarked on a five-year voyage to chart the coastline of South America, which could easily make for some heavily fictionalized, CGI-laden Hollywood fare.
Again, virtually nothing about the untitled project — other than that Disney bought it and Gaigan wants to direct — is clear. Casting, other credits, and production are all one big question mark. Maybe a finished project will never see the light of day. But Beck, who is no fan of evolutionary theory, already has enough reason to holler on about it.
It’s not the first time in recent years that Beck has freaked out over a movie on religious or political grounds. He declared that the Russell Crowe biblical epic Noah was “pro-animal and…strongly anti-human,” and that it had “no redeeming value.” Beck claimed that The East (a 2013 thriller, starring Ellen Page, that follows an eco-terrorist collective) was helping to push American culture in the direction of “flat-out evil.” Beck came to this harsh conclusion after watching its flat-out evil trailer; he had not actually seen the film.
“Hollywood is missing this moment to reconnect with the American people because they don’t speak the language,” Beck told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014, while discussing his own plans to venture into faith-based and more conventional filmmaking. “Some of it is out of spite — they might not like people of faith.”
A representative for Gaigan did not respond to a request for comment regarding Glenn Beck’s displeasure over the unmade feature film. It’s probably because he dislikes people of faith.