Speaking at Disney’s Q4 earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger says Disney+ and Hulu are to merge and confirms they won’t licence Marvel or Star Wars to Netflix. However, they may be more willing to go down that route with less tentpole products.
Disney still needs to finalize it’s buy out of Comcast for Hulu, but there looks to be no major stumbling blocks that won’t be resolved there. As reported by Variety:
“We remain on track to roll out a more unified one-app experience domestically, making extensive general entertainment content available to bundle subscribers via Disney+.”
‘A beta version of the Disney+/Hulu app will launch in December for subscribers of the two-service bundle — giving parents time to set up parental controls, according to Iger, who explained that Disney+ customers will be able to access adult-oriented Hulu content — ahead of the official launch in spring 2024 (around late March). The company expects Hulu on Disney+ to result in increased engagement, greater ad revenue, reduce customer-acquisition costs and lower churn, Iger said.’
This one app has been a thing for quite some time in international territories such as Europe and Asia.
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Secondly, as reported by Deadline, Iger says they are not willing to chase the cash by licencing franchises like Marvel or Star Wars to Netflix.
“We’ve actually been licensing content to Netflix and are going to continue to. We’re actually in discussion with them now about some opportunities, but I wouldn’t expect that we will license our core brands to them. Those are obviously competitive advantages for us and differentiators. Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars for instance, they are all doing very, very well on our platform and I don’t see why just to basically chase bucks we should do that when they are really really important building blocks to the current and future of our streaming business.”
This became relevant recently because that is exactly what WB/D are doing with their DC movies to make some cash. Though, given that the DCEU just got whacked and will rebooted into the DCU, perhaps it’s less risky for WB/D to make that call. They have kinda already abandoned those movies anyway.
What do you think of his comments as Disney CEO Bob Iger says Disney+ and Hulu are to merge and confirms they won’t licence Marvel or Star Wars to Netflix? Let us know in the comments.
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