Is Disney+ coming to Malaysia soon?

Disney+, Disney’s answer to Netflix, isn’t available yet in Malaysia—as it’s only currently available in a handful of other countries. However, things might be changing soon… we just don’t know when that is, exactly.

What is Disney+?

Disney+ is a strong contender to beat Netflix for most watched on-demand streaming service due to a wide range of acquisitions made by Disney. In March 2019, they acquired key entertainment assets from 21st Century Fox. The service also operates alongside Hulu—another Disney-owned on-demand streaming service.

To differentiate themselves from Netflix, the service would be focused specifically on family-oriented entertainment (and not carry any R and NC-17 or TV-MA-rated content). Any non-family-oriented content would be streamed on Hulu.

As well as many other regular Disney content like the animated films from Pixar, the service’s massive library contains most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Simpsons, as well as all of Star Wars. Recently, Broadway’s mega-hit music Hamilton, premiered on the streaming service—resulting in a ton of fan reactions on Twitter.

So far, Disney+ is only available in the Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States. I had several cases of FOMO looking through reactions of things like Hamilton and memes of Baby Yoda in The Mandalorian—which is why I was excited to hear that the service might reach South East Asia soon.

When will it be available here?

According to Mashable Southeast Asia, there are quite a few new jobs on the Disney careers page specific for Disney+… but only if you’re based in Singapore. The jobs include:

The new roles appear to be for operations, covering subscription, partner engagement and PR in Southeast Asia—which means that it is very likely for the South East Asian region to get access to Disney+ soon. The Creative Producer role might also mean the possibility of seeing localised content for our region.

The price for the streaming platform’s subscription in the U.S. is USD6.99 (RM30) a month or USD69.99 (RM300) a year. If Disney plans to expand rapidly in the Southeast Asian market, they would probably introduce lower subscription fees. According to Netflix, they shared that Malaysia is a very mobile-centric market, which is why they introduced a Mobile-only Netflix plan that costs RM17/month.

It is also said that Asia and Pacific countries should be getting the service soon beginning mid-2020 to 2021—although no plans have been officially announced yet.

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