New Disney Streaming Service: Disney+

[James]

That's a great point. Still seems a little odd to see it up there with the likes of Marvel and Star Wars though. But like those, I wonder if Disney is going to go all in with NatGeo, maybe somehow working their DisneyNature brand in there with it.

(BTW: edited the thread title!)

[Ben]

It always amuses me that they label Star Wars on the level of Marvel when it’s a brand, not a studio. It should be Lucasfilm, of course.

[EricJ]

That's a great point. Still seems a little odd to see it up there with the likes of Marvel and Star Wars though. But like those, I wonder if Disney is going to go all in with NatGeo, maybe somehow working their DisneyNature brand in there with it.

IIRC--from being on the frontlines of the Blu-vs-HD battle back in '08--the only reason we have "DisneyNature" is that Disney, with Steve Jobs on the board, was almost singlehandedly trying to sell Blu-ray in the beginning (no help from Sony ), but most early adopters only owned two or three Blu-ray discs, and one of them would invariably be BBC's Planet Earth.
It's not hard to guess why Disney suddenly started an entire late-00's film industry to crank out beautiful scenic hi-definition nature films.

Now that NatGeo is part of the package, and doesn't want to make their own solo paywall channel (wise move), that does bring up some redundancy issues with DisneyNature.

Most Fox stuff will go via Hulu, though.

Hulu is reportedly bleeding money fast, about $1B per year, but Iger's said Disney's not giving up their part-investment yet. (And that they "hope to see figures go up, not down"...Yes, that would be nice.)

I'm already cleaning off my Hulu queue, as I expect Warner and Universal won't be as patient about jumping ship with their investments, and it may not live to see '20.
Up to now, the market was in studios owning their own channels for content, but if Disney+ does well, it IS going to bring up the question of why they have two.

[TitusTodd]

If the price is the same as CBS All Access I'll be all over it. CBS All Access is something to complain about and definitely not worth paying for. Disney Plus looks to be much better with existing and new content. CBS just has CBS. Until 21st Century Fox is fully in, I don't think we'll see it linked to Disney Plus but I'm sure there are some possibilities for past, present and future content making it there.

I guess I'm the only one that wasn't too impressed with the original Disney Channel. I didn't find the exclusive new content very pleasing and we had much of the other Disney content on VHS already. When it started, Disney was definitely still in its darker days before the first Disney Renaissance.

[Dacey]

With Daredevil being cancelled, it would appear Disney wants to get rid of all of "their content" on Netflix. Heck, I'd bet that's the main reason they cancelled it prematurely.

Granted, Netflix never releases ratings, but by most accounts it was a successful show.

[Randall]

Well, Netflix appeared to cancel it, not Disney. Disagreements between the two on budget and season length seem to have played a role, so one could argue that Disney wanted the cancellation. Disney HAS said they have further plans for Daredevil, so we'll see what develops. Disney owns the Netflix shows, though Netflix has streaming rights for years to come, for the already-produced episodes.

[Ben]

Disney being obstinate is 100% why "Netflix" cancelled the show.

The remaining two shows will end in due course too, no doubt. Other distributors may have rights to content around the world, but eventually Disney will get back everything they own.

They’ll buy Sony next...

[gaastra]

Venom made $800m and spider-verse is getting praised like crazy by critics as the best Spider-Man film of all time and best animated film of this year!

I think sony will be fine.

[EricJ]

Venom made $800m and spider-verse is getting praised like crazy by critics as the best Spider-Man film of all time and best animated film of this year!
I think sony will be fine.

(Gee, I thought Sony stopped paying off "social media" posters, back in the 00's...)

[Dacey]

Spider-Verse does look great--and decidedly "comic booky"--but I see no reason the Venom movie can't be part of the MCU if Disney wants that (apart from the brief strong language, of course). At the very least I can see the Tom Hardy character dropping by for an Avengers film cameo.

[Ben]

Okay...y'all missed my rather obvious big wink after the Sony comment...!!!

[ShyViolet]

Really, really awesome about all of the Disney Vault being available to stream. I have to say I’m quite surprised.

[Dacey]

Except that it probably won't include a certain movie about a song that was sung in the south.

[EricJ]

Nice to see the reaction hasn't gone into Chicken Little mode (heh, see what I did there?), and in ten seconds started screaming like a girl that "Disney's doing away with the Vault?...They're getting rid of Blu/DVD! It's the END OF PHYSICAL!!!! "

...Nnnno. It means that, since they need as many of their core titles available for killer streaming competition, they're abandoning the nineteen-year (thirty, if you count VHS) idea of keeping their eleven classics unavailable in seven-year cycles. Especially now that the cycles have broken down with more need to keep big Blu releases going, it's been down to five years on the average, and now, it seems, has collapsed completely.

This is more in the category of Fantasia '40 still being available for streaming on Netflix even when the disk wasn't out of the Vault for sale, and we'll probably see the classics still released on Blu as needed. They know it's still a necessary cash flow, just that they're not planning to hold their titles hostage anymore.

[ShyViolet]

Except that it probably won't include a certain movie about a song that was sung in the south.

Oh wow Dacey I didn’t even think about that. That’s a very interesting question. It’ll certainly be fascinating to see the issues that unfold, and how Disney decides to play it.