Disney Plus is promising to carry all of Disney’s movies, including their animated family fare, Star Wars and even the MCU films. What this means for other streaming services is that they’ll have to fight the combined might of Disney’s industrial hype complex with their own programming.
What does this mean for the consumer, though? Well, if you like Star Wars, Marvel or Disney cartoons, it means you’re getting yet another subscription to watch them.
Disney Plus
Release and Pricing
At present, we know only a little about the potential release window and pricing of Disney’s new streaming service. Disney has stated that they want the service to be live by “late 2019”. It’s unclear whether this means as soon as August or as late as December, though we’d expect it to hit some time in November.
As for price, Disney CEO Bob Iger has been clear that Disney knows their service will be content-light compared to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime. As such, Iger stated that consumers can expect the price to reflect that. What, exactly, this means for the price has yet to be seen, though we’d guess somewhere in the range of $8-$10 per month.
Content
When Disney Plus launches, it’s expected to have a few standout TV shows exclusive to the platform. Namely, a Star Wars series called The Mandalorian, as well as a pair of Marvel shows centered on Loki and Scarlet Witch, respectively. Also expected to be present at launch are all of Marvel’s films, including Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame.
On the cartoon side, Disney has stated that even animated films currently in “the Vault” will be brought out for viewing on the Disney Plus service. That means that you can watch Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast even if they’re not out of “the Vault”, which is a new approach for the legacy company.
Another Subscription
Thanks to the Fox merger, Disney now also own Hulu. This means that diehard Marvel fans who want to see everything will need to have Hulu, too, as Marvel’s more adult-oriented shows are heading there. It seems like this is the future of media distribution, as each company scrambles to match Netflix as a streaming content producer.
Disney Plus is the latest in a long line of such platforms. CBS All Access and ESPN Plus are both examples of yet more streaming services vying for your subscription dollars. You’ll have to decide whether yet another subscription is worth it when Disney Plus launches later this year.