Since then, the collective has done educational workshops on the cute bake-sale theme, with the ultimate goal of teaching skills like encryption or how to set up a dark web server to other femme-identified people.
That payoff comes not just in the form of box office receipts, of course, but through the full range of Disney's business operations – DVD sales, merchandising, theme parks, resorts and the like, stemming from its movies, characters and other content.
Van der Werf dispatched divers who swam through rough seas in darkness to cut through six holding pens, freeing a number of dolphins awaiting sale to theme parks.
"This definitely is the most unique Disney item we have ever offered for sale," said Theme Park Connection owner Marc Pianko.
Partly, the city fears that a slowing economy could cut ticket sales at its theme parks.
But by selling items together and according to a particular theme, sales on the featured products have jumped by 40percentt over last year, he said.
Shares of the Walt Disney Company dropped 58 cents, to $17.68, after a larger fourth-quarter profit met analysts' expectations, but the company said that sales at its theme parks remained slow.
Upon the film's release, the value of SeaWorld's stock dropped 33%, ticket sales to its theme parks plummeted, and corporate partners and educational institutions severed their ties with the company.
Themed sales often bring another kind of exposure, auction house executives have discovered: free publicity.
Christie's provides another example: last month, during the semiannual New York Fashion Week, it held an online-only theme sale called "Andy Warhol@Christie's: Fashion".
