Disney Removing a Piece of Gina Carano Content With Upcoming Purge

The Disney+ streaming library is growing smaller. On Friday, May 26, the streamer is purging dozens of titles, including Earth to Ned, the Jim Henson Company series that once featured former The Mandalorian star Gina Carano.

Originally premiering in September 2020, Earth to Ned ran for a total of 20 episodes. The series centered around Ned, an alien from outer space who, after coming to Earth on a mission to invade it, falls in love with its pop culture and begins to host a late-night talk show. The series featured a number of guests throughout its run, with Carano appearing on Season 1, Episode 8, "Nothin' But Ned." Per the episode's synopsis, "Baffled by football, Ned drafts Joel McHale and Gina Carano to help him understand human sports."

The show's removal from the Disney+ content catalog follows the controversy surrounding Carano that began in 2020 after she published and liked several offensive posts on social media, including a post comparing being a Republican to being Jewish during the Holocaust. The posts immediately sparked backlash and led #FireGinaCerano to trend on Twitter. In February 2021, Lucasfilm announced that Carano, who starred on The Mandalorian as Cara Dune, "is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future." Addressing the firing shortly after, Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Chapek said Disney stands "for values that are universal: Values of respect, values of decency, values of integrity and values of inclusion. And we seek to have the content that we make reflective of the rich diversity of the world we live in. And I think that's a world we should all live in harmony and peace."

However, Earth to Ned's removal does not seem to be due to Carano's controversies. Rather, the show is among a long list of titles being removed as a cost-cutting measure. Deadline reported that Disney is pulling content from both Disney+ and Hulu globally. The move comes with a content impairment charge of $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion and was announced during the May 10 Disney earnings call, during which CFO Christine McCarthy confirmed, "We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation." The longlist of titles being pulled is mostly short-lived series, specials and direct-to-streaming movies, including Willow, Turner & Hooch, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, and The Mysterious Benedict Society, among many others on Disney+.