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Why did Disney call off its fight with the LA Times?

Citing “productive discussions with the newly installed leadership at The Los Angeles Times,” Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday revoked its controversial ban on advance screenings for LA Times film journalists.

The ban was Disney’s retaliation for what the corporation considered unfair treatment in a September LA Times investigative series on Disneyland Park and the city of Anaheim, Calif. A baldly punitive step designed to register its displeasure with the Tronc media conglomerate’s largest asset (the Chicago Tribune is the second-largest), the ban provoked widespread anger and, to many, surprising solidarity on behalf of media organizations around the country, along with various high-profile critics’ organizations.

Disney, overseers of the Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar studios, changed its mind about the LA Times advance screening ban after news of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the A.V. Club and other outlets boycotting Disney screenings as a show of support.

I can’t prove it, but it couldn’t have hurt to have Ava DuVernay, the director of Disney’s adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time,” joining that support on Twitter. “Saluting the film journalists standing up for one another,” she tweeted Monday. “Standing with you.” “A Wrinkle in Time” will be released March 9, 2018.

Now: Why would a major director such as DuVernay get involved in what appeared to be a standoff between a movie studio and LA’s major newspaper?

The answer, I think, can be found in something I was proud to put my name to, as a member of the National Society of Film Critics. The Tuesday statement, in conjunction with the LA, New York and Boston film critics groups, reads in part:

“Disney’s actions, which include an indefinite ban on any interaction with The Times, are antithetical to the principles of a free press and set a dangerous precedent in a time of already heightened hostility toward journalists.

“It is admittedly extraordinary for a critics’ group, let alone four critics’ groups, to take any action that might penalize film artists for decisions beyond their control. But Disney brought forth this action when it chose to punish The Times’ journalists rather than express its disagreement with a business story via ongoing public discussion. Disney’s response should gravely concern all who believe in the importance of a free press, artists included.”

Disney clearly felt it was treated unfairly, even bullied, by biased investigative journalism. The company responded in kind, and with the advance screening ban on writers and editors from an entirely different LA Times department, they were saying, in effect: nyah-nee-nyah-nee-nyah-nyah.

In the ban-takeback statement Tuesday, Disney intimated that the new LA Times editorial management said the right, reassuring things they wanted to hear “regarding our specific concerns … as a result, we’ve agreed to restore access to advance screenings for their film critics.”

Disney hasn’t called for any corrections or clarifications regarding the September LA Times investigative stories. They just didn’t like the implications of the Times’ coverage. “Complete disregard for basic journalistic standards,” Disney contended in an earlier statement. The targeted advance screening ban was payback.

The show of solidarity from so many journalistic and critical voices, backed by their owners, took many by surprise. The Chicago Tribune, for the record, had decided to join the Disney advance screening boycott an hour or so before Disney’s announcement that the LA Times screening ban was off.

Washington Post critic at large Alyssa Rosenberg was one of the first to put her ideals into practice Monday.

“As long as Disney is blocking the critics from the Los Angeles Times from press screenings, I can’t in good conscience attend similar showings or write reviews in advance,” she wrote, adding: “I like a lot of movies that come out of the Disney corporate behemoth … but I like journalistic independence from corporate influence more.”

Late Monday, Chicago-based film critic A.A. Dowd of The Onion’s A.V. Club called Disney’s screening ban “a purely vindictive response.” Dowd elaborated, “It’s a dangerous precedent that Disney is setting: Write an unfavorable story — one that Disney hasn’t disputed factually, even — and it will blacklist your publication, punishing independent journalism by using its massive corporate influence.”

On Tuesday, four major critics’ organizations voted to disqualify Disney’s films from year-end awards consideration until the Disney media blackout regarding the LA Times was revoked. Which it was, later that day.

So Disney did the right thing, after trying out the wrong thing for a while. I can speak to one Chicago experience with the Mouse House, dating back a few years (an eternity, in other words). Between 2006 and 2010, first opposite Richard Roeper and then The New York Times’ A.O. Scott, I co-hosted “At the Movies,” the TV institution made famous by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Disney owned the show, and it had nothing to gain, monetarily, from letting anybody sit in front of a camera and talk about the Disney biker comedy “Wild Hogs” in ways that would not please their stockholders.

Unless you consider cancellation of a long-running show retaliation, Disney never retaliated, never interfered.

“I was surprised, frankly,” Don DuPree recalled Monday. DuPree was with “At the Movies” for nearly 20 years, eventually as executive producer-director.

“Disney respected the integrity and autonomy of that show,” he said. “Hard to believe.”

However short-lived, Disney’s LA Times screening ban made the folks who brought you the happiest place on Earth look like the pettiest.

The screening ban pushback was a tonic — a strong showing of critical and journalistic solidarity. Collegiality costs nothing. But it can mean everything, whether you write about movies for a living or not.

Michael Phillips is the Chicago Tribune film critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune