Beyond Disney's Boy Trouble: Finding Real Purpose Through Christian Storytelling

This week’s headlines admitted something the entertainment giants have been avoiding: Disney has a “boy problem.”

Disney's Boy Trouble: Studio Seeks Original IP to Win Back Gen-Z Men Amid Marvel, Lucasfilm Struggles

Variety and MSN report that Disney’s live-action division is scrambling for “fresh IP” because young men—once the backbone of Marvel and Star Wars fandom—have stopped showing up. Even a solidly reviewed film like Fantastic Four: First Steps underperformed. Sequels like Zootopia 2 or the next Avatar are on the way, but even insiders admit those don’t exactly scream “teenage boy.”

Hollywood doesn’t just have a business problem. It has a meaning problem. And worse—it has a preaching problem.

Preaching Progressivism to Boys

For the last decade, Disney has leaned hard into progressive messaging. Star Wars stopped being about the epic struggle of good and evil and turned into lectures about patriarchy and privilege. Marvel, once about courage and sacrifice, became bogged down in forced identity politics and endless monologues about “the system.”

Men don’t want to be preached at. They don’t want every story turned into a sermon against masculinity. They don’t want to pay $15 to sit in a theater and be told that the very instincts that make them men—strength, conviction, leadership—are the problem.

And so, they’ve walked away.

When Christian Media Made the Same Mistake

But here’s the truth: Christians have made the same mistake.

We know the “God’s Not Dead” model. Heavy-handed scripts where characters exist only to deliver a message. Flat villains, cardboard heroes, and dialogue that feels like it was cribbed from a church bulletin. Those films weren’t dangerous because they preached Christ—they were weak because they preached at the audience instead of telling a story that embodied the truth.

Contrast that with Lewis, Tolkien, or T.S. Eliot. None of them watered down their Christianity, but they didn’t shoehorn it into wooden monologues either. They made art. They crafted worlds and characters so real that truth radiated through them. The Chronicles of Narnia are saturated with the Gospel without being reduced to a tract. The Lord of the Rings is a Christian epic without a single “altar call scene.” Eliot’s poetry plunges into despair and resurrection without pandering.

The difference? They trusted the Word of God and the power of story to work together.

Hollywood vs. Christian Fiction Today

Disney is hoping original IP will fix their “boy problem.” But originality without truth is just another trend waiting to die. Progressive messaging may score points with critics, but it leaves men cold.

Christian fiction, on the other hand, is beginning to right its past wrongs. Writers are learning again that you don’t need to preach at your audience—you need to tell the truth through compelling, honest stories. Stories where characters wrestle, bleed, and fail. Stories where grace is not handed out in slogans, but revealed in the cracks of broken lives.

That’s why I wrote Children of the Black Veil.

What Children of the Black Veil Offers

On its surface, it’s pulp noir—gritty alleys, corruption in high places, and a detective who smokes out the truth while the city rots. But underneath, it’s a story about redemption, courage, and the reality of spiritual warfare.

The men in Chandler City aren’t being scolded for being men. They’re being confronted with their sins, their failures, and their need for something bigger than themselves. They aren’t told to shrink back from courage—they’re called to embrace it.

This is the difference between Disney’s boy problem and Christian storytelling’s boy answer. Progressive scripts tell men, “You are the problem.” Christian fiction says, “You were made for more. Your strength matters. Your fight matters. Christ redeems even you.”

The Collapse of False Stories

Josephus, writing of Jerusalem’s destruction, said the city fell not only to Rome but to its own corruption—leaders who devoured their own people, factions that tore each other apart, truth that was replaced with lies. In a similar way, Disney is watching its empire crack, not because of a lack of money or talent, but because its stories have turned against their own audience.

Luther once wrote that God makes men “by His Word, not by our works.” That’s true of the Christian life, but it’s also true of stories. When you replace the Word with ideology, when you replace honest art with propaganda, you breed weakness. But when you tell the truth—even in a detective novel set in a fictional Chandler City—you give men something to stand on.

Original IP vs. Eternal IP

Disney wants originality. Christianity has eternity.

Our fiction doesn’t need to flatter men or lecture them. It needs to call them into the greater story: the story of a God who entered the world, faced down evil, and won. When men see that story refracted in art, they don’t just feel entertained—they feel called.

That’s what Tolkien did. That’s what Lewis did. And that’s what Christian fiction can do again.

A Final Word

Disney is asking, “How do we get boys back into theaters?”

The Church should be asking, “How do we give men a story worth living for?”

That’s the heart behind Children of the Black Veil. It isn’t a lecture. It isn’t a piece of propaganda. It’s a gritty pulp story that takes men seriously, shows them the cost of corruption, and points them to redemption.

Hollywood will keep selling franchises. I’ll keep writing stories that don’t just distract you for two hours but remind you that your life has eternal weight.

If you’re ready for that kind of story, pick up Children of the Black Veil. And if you’d like a free starting point, subscribe here on Substack and get Faith, Fiction, and the Fight.

Because what men need is not another lecture. What men need is a story that gives them a reason to stand, to fight, and to believe.