Why Hasn't The Princess & The Frog Reach 100 Million in Box Office Sales Yet?

In comparison to black films, it's doing great. With an $86 million box after several weeks in theatres, however, Disney suits can't be pleased with this soft total, especially given all the grief they had to endure to get it made and the millions spent marketing this historic tale.

But Scott Foundas, film critic for LA Weekly, is interviewed by Michele Norris of NPR about the something other than the underperforming numbers that could have a lasting impact on the future of hand drawn animated films.

Foundas deals with the racial aspects of the movie starring Anika Noni Rose as the first Black Disney princess and why the film can't escape the ghetto. Click the picture above to listen to this very interesting interview

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Obama & Jessie, Whoopi & Elisabeth Hasselback and Now Disney's Black Princess All Trying to be "racially correct"

When Disney announced it was casting its first black princess for its latest animation film, the African-American heroine was hailed as a positive role model for little girls. But now the film studio finds itself fending off a chorus of accusations of racial stereotyping in its forthcoming big-budget cartoon and making major changes in the story, characters and title of the movie.

A musical set in 1920s New Orleans, the film was supposed to feature Maddy, a black chambermaid working for a spoilt, white Southern debutante. Maddy was to be helped by a voodoo priestess fairy godmother to win the heart of a white prince, after he rescued her from the clutches of a voodoo magician.

Disney's original storyboard is believed to have been torn up after criticism that the lead character was a clichéd subservient role with echoes of slavery, and whose name sounded too much like "Mammy" – a unwelcome reminder of America's Deep South before the civil rights movement swept away segregation.

The heroine has been recast as Tiana, a 19-year-old in a country that has never had a monarchy. She is now slated to live "happily ever after" with a handsome fellow who is not black – with leaks suggesting that he will be of Middle Eastern heritage and called Naveen. The race of the villain in the cartoon is reported to have also been revised.
See Arifa Akbar writer for The Independent for the rest of this story.