Are you talking about me? If so...
There was no boycott. What are you even talking about? Hardly anyone even knew this movie existed in the first place, let alone was there enough knowledge of it to mount some sort of silly boycott.
We will never know what caused Burbank execs to abandon this movie in the marketplace by not marketing it, after spending $180 Million to produce it. We will only be able to guess. Through this thread I've read some really interesting points and perspectives on it, and at this current state in the conversation I'm of the opinion that...
(Read on only if you are open to wild assumptions bordering on conspiracy theory, but it's all we've got!
)....
Burbank execs got scared by summer '22 after the backlash and bad publicity surrounding a very minor Lesbian character mention in Lightyear. And Lightyear did poorly at the box office (not as disastrous as Strange World, but that was in the future still). Knowing that they had doubled-down on putting gay characters into children's animation, they knew Strange World had the teenage boy who was gay and had dialogue and supporting characters to clearly spell it out that he was homosexual. It was unavoidable. And test audiences of boys/men really disliked Strange World, while women were indifferent. So by mid summer Burbank execs think "Uh-oh. If we thought the PR on Lightyear was bad, wait until America learns about Strange World!". So they buried it. They cancelled most of the marketing for it. They pulled the toys and children's merchandise from open distribution at Target and WalMart and DisneyStores for Christmas. Strange World was purposely buried to avoid as much bad PR as possible. And it mostly worked for them, to their credit! It slid under the radar for most Americans, and never got mentioned by conservative media during its launch because almost no one even knew it existed. It only is getting mentioned now in passing, in a woke-year-in-review type format. On to Disney+ which is burning money even without Strange World!
That's about as good an explanation as I've got, after six weeks on this thread.
It still doesn't explain why
Strange World was released in over 4,100 theaters without any real marketing, but that may have something to do with contractual obligations with theater chains. If anyone here knows how that part of the movie business works and how theater slots get divvied up between films, please weigh in here! I'd love to know how that works!
Does anyone else have another theory they'd like to throw out? I'd be interested to hear other thoughts on this mystery.