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Disney To Pull Its Movies From Netflix and Start Its Own Streaming Service (theverge.com)
Disney announced today that it will end its distribution deal with Netflix and launch its own streaming service in 2019. "The move is a real blow to Netflix, which secured a valuable streaming deal with Disney back in 2012 -- before streaming had really taken off," reports The Verge. "The deal only kicked into effect last year, so Netflix is barely seeing any benefit here." From the report: Netflix won't lose its Disney movies right away. Disney says it plans to cut Netflix off starting with the studio's 2019 films, and Netflix says it'll be able to keep all the Disney movies it gets through the end of that year. That means Netflix should be able to stream the next two Star Wars movies, but it'll miss out on the new trilogy's final installment. "We continue to do business with the Walt Disney Company on many fronts, including our ongoing deal with Marvel TV," said a spokesperson for Netflix. Disney's streaming service will be built off technology from BAMTech, the MLB-founded video streaming platform. Disney was already a major investor in BAMTech, and today it's making an even bigger investment -- of $1.58 billion -- giving it a 75 percent stake in the company. The acquisition still requires regulatory approval. The Disney-branded streaming service will be the "exclusive home in the U.S. for subscription-video-on-demand viewing," and will kick off with films including Toy Story 4 and the sequel to Frozen. "Original movies, TV shows, [and] short-form content" will be added to the service, and it'll be filled out with older movies from Disney and Pixar's catalog and shows from Disney's TV channels. The report also notes Disney plans to launch a streaming service exclusively for ESPN, targeted for launch early next year. "Disney is promising about '10,000 live regional, national, and international games and events a year,' with individual sports packages available as well," reports The Verge.
This all resembles when the studios vertically "integrated" the movie houses... And were eventually forced to divest.
Let's see... What all does Comcast own/control.
No, we don't need network neutrality
Disney already tried this with licensing out their characters to other companies to produce video games. They decided to stop that practice entirely and use an in-house game studio instead. Their games went to shit. Then a couple years later, they started licensing out again.
I have a feeling that history will repeat itself with this news of licensing streaming content.
One, of all the networks, Disney is perhaps the only one with a catalog full enough to actually present a good competitor to Netflix.
Two, I think this is a reaction to Netflix buying up Millarworld.
Overnight Netflix went from being a popular platform for delivering Disney product to a direct competitor to Disney's very profitable Marvel IP. It was inevitable, really, Netflix is tired of being Hollywood's bitch over licensing properties and they've been very proactive about fixing that, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they don't buy out an actual studio. Regardless, Disney probably felt distinctly uncomfortable with the move, and knowing they do have a very large catalog of desirable properties felt safe launching their own service.