It's long-standing Disney policy, and has effected films from the Fox film archives as well. (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...)
Ok, they do do that by policy, not by exception. But the title is correct.
A lot of people want to give Disney some money; Disney refuses. The title is an apt description of that, and not misleading. It's a bit hyperbolic, but only if you are interested on the Disney's side, for any other point of view it looks reasonable.
They simply never gave them permission to do so in the first place.
It's especially pertinent here since the purpose of screening the movie was to commemorate the life of Chadwick Boseman, the lead actor of that movie. Disney didn't even make an exception by unvaulting a popular movie on the occasion of the lead actor's death.
But when it comes to the pedantry…
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stop
… remember that "stop" used as a transitive verb means "to make impassable," or "to keep from carrying out a proposed action." There doesn't have to be an action in progress to stop it. The theatre proposed a course of action, Disney stopped that course of action by not giving access to the resources required to proceed.
There are eight senses of the word "stop" when used as a transitive verb, and your pedantic argument relies on choosing one sense of the word and ignoring the others.
If you are going to be pedantic, do it properly.
Am I right in thinking this policy started under Eisner, or has it been going on longer?
Nobody else locks their old content up like Fort Knox, Disney.
Eisner was mostly responsible for changing vault releases to home media sales (like VHS or DVD) instead of theatrical releases.
Disney does not generally grant licenses to theaters to show its films second-run (meaning after their initial box-office run) except as part of re-release initiated by Disney. They make extremely limited exceptions to this policy; the Rocky Horror Picture Show is basically the only film in the Disney/Fox vault that they allow to show second-run.
In this case, the theater announced they were going to show Black Panther without actually bothering to get the license ahead of time, and Disney did not make an exception to their policy.
https://www.wesh.com/article/reedy-creek-firefighters-protes...
Rest in peace.
