On Monday, Brie Larson shared an image from her upcoming film Captain Marvel while encouraging everyone to vote on Election Day. The image is seemingly innocuous enough, showing the titular hero in her Starforce uniform standing at a payphone. But presumably unbeknownst to Brie Larson, the payphone in the photo actually has a 1-800 number on it. This number is not only functional, but it leads to a phone sex line. Check out the photo below.
While it's hard to see here, the phone number on the telephone reads 1-800-654-2192 (via Reddit). It seems that Disney once used this number for television shows similar to the way the 555 numbers are used in movies and TV today. The 1-800 number was once seen in the commercials for the Tipton Hotel on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
Well, the Tipton and Disney must have let the number go because it no longer leads callers to a pre-recorded message from ABC or to the fictional Boston hotel. So the shared MCU/Disney Channel universe is not canon. The number on Captain Marvel's payphone is now used by a phone sex hotline. Check for yourself if you must, but yeah, it's legit.
I don't know whether it's more shocking that this oversight happened under the tight ship Disney runs or that phone sex lines are still even a thing.
It's not clear if Captain Marvel was calling the number, but if she was, no judgment here, Captain Marvel just got to Earth and doesn't know anybody, and she's probably a little lonely and could use someone to talk to. Maybe Carol Danvers wound up on the phone with Jennifer Jason Leigh's phone sex operator from Robert Altman's Short Cuts. Or maybe she was calling to hang out with Zack and Cody at the Tipton. We may never know.
I'm not sure if Brie Larson's Instagram post encouraged people to get out and vote. Hopefully it did, but it has probably caused "America's hottest talk line" to see a definite uptick in the number of calls it is receiving. I wouldn't be surprised if one of those calls is Disney trying to buy the number back. Or Disney could just go the Justice League route and use CGI to scrub out and change the number in post.
If I had to take a wild guess at how exactly a phone sex number wound up on a payphone in a still from a Disney film, I'd say that the payphone is a prop that Disney has had since the company owned the number. This movie is set in the '90s and a payphone was needed. This one was dragged out from wherever it was stored, knowing that it had a Disney-owned number on it. Nobody thought to check to make sure that was still the case, and here we are.
Captain Marvel arrives in theaters on March 8, 2019. Check out our 2019 release schedule for all the movies on next year's jam-packed calendar, and for a good time that doesn't cost you $3 per minute, stay tuned to CinemaBlend.
