It appears Disney wants its own slice of the online streaming pie because the company just announced that they will be pulling their extensive catalogue of movies from Netflix in a bid to start their own streaming service. Yeap, that means you’ll soon have to pay ANOTHER subscription just to watch Disney movies.
This deal is probably one of the biggest blows to Netflix’s movie catalogue but it won’t happen immediately. According to reports, Disney will only pull their movies from Netflix in 2019. This means that Netflix will still have access to any of the studio’s films that come out before then, and continue to stream them until the end of 2019.
However, Disney will be cutting Netflix off their 2019 films — including Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2 — as well as all movies that will come out starting 2019. If any of the movies that are due this year or in 2018 happen to get delayed, it’s likely that those shows will not appear on Netflix either.
This, unfortunately, also means that Netflix subscribers won’t be able to stream the final installation of the new Star Wars trilogy, though they will still be able to stream the next two Star Wars movies. Besides that, this deal also affects Netflix’s access to new Marvel movies (like Avengers 4 and Captain Marvel) by the end of 2019.
That said, reporter Matthew Zeitlin does say that the details surrounding this deal is (so far) unclear. He tweets that Disney CEO Bob Iger confirms the fact that Disney Pixar “will definitely be a part of this” (referring to Disney’s new streaming service) and not be a “part of any other pay window distributor in the US”. However, Iger also says that regarding Marvel and the Star Wars franchise, Disney has yet to determine what their course of action is yet.
IGER: “the Disney branded app will have…Disney and Pixar. The disposition of.. Marvel and Lucas or Star Wars…we have not determined yet”
— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) August 8, 2017
Re: Marvel and Star Wars, Iger says “It’s possible we will continue to license them to a pay service like Netflix.”
— Matthew Zeitlin (@MattZeitlin) August 8, 2017
One thing that is certain, however, is that Netflix will continue its ongoing deal with Marvel TV to produce shows like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and the upcoming The Defenders.
Over on Disney’s side of things, it’s hard to see how Disney’s own streaming service won’t be successful. With the kind of catalogue that they have, parents, Marvel fans and Star Wars fans alike will flock to it even if it means they have to pay for an extra service. Sure, they won’t like it, but that’s what life has come to now.
For us here in Malaysia, however, we’re not really affected because our Netflix subscriptions only give us access to a very limited catalogue of content. We don’t get Marvel movies, we don’t get Star Wars movies nor do we get Disney animations. So, unless you’ve been using a VPN to watch Netflix in Malaysia, odds are, you won’t be severely effected.
