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.

Comments

Progress of the Arts and Sciences

[hord]

When do the other movie studios pull their licensing and NetFlix only has original content? And is the Disney service going to be as good or better than the NetFlix experience?

Full Disclaimer: I'm glad Bambi's mom died.

Re:Progress of the Arts and Sciences

[rahvin112]

This is Hulu 2.0.

Every couple years the distributors try to setup their own streaming company. And every few years said new streaming company goes under because the rights holders make stupid decisions and the streaming doesn't work. Expect it to fail just like all the things before it.

Re:Progress of the Arts and Sciences

[Daemonik]

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.

Re:Progress of the Arts and Sciences

[mjwx]

This is Hulu 2.0.

Every couple years the distributors try to setup their own streaming company. And every few years said new streaming company goes under because the rights holders make stupid decisions and the streaming doesn't work. Expect it to fail just like all the things before it.

As much as I agree with that point, if anyone is going to be able to do it it'll be Disney. They're specialists at pacifying the most unruly consumer group that has ever dared to appear at a Target... Children. All Disney have to do is price themselves at $1 less that the pain threshold of parents with kids.

Re:Progress of the Arts and Sciences

[cayenne8]

Other thing is....I'm NOT terribly inclined to add any more streaming services to my list of things I pay for monthly.

I have Netflix.

I have Amazon Prime (not just for video, but lots of stuff for the $).

When I cut the cord, I got Playstation VUE...that covers my "cable" channels, news, sports (I only really like watching college football on ESPNs)....

I also have tivo and antenna for local HD OTA content...no monthly fees there, but just with that and the 3 streaming services I mentioned, it would have to be something VERY compelling for me to add yet another streaming service.

I have more content than I need at this time....WTF would I add Disney? (or any other service out there).

Re:Progress of the Arts and Sciences

[Altrag]

Disney owns a lot more than cartoons about princesses. As others have noted already, Star Wars and the Marvel movies come to mind. I'm sure your late teens are kind of interested in those (especially if they're boys, though there's no shortage of girls who like action movies either.) They own the distribution rights to many (maybe all?) of the Studio Ghibli movies in the US. And thousands upon thousands of other titles you probably wouldn't even think of as being Disney properties (R-rated movies and the like.)
  Disney is huge. If you're wanting to stay legitimate, you'd be losing a large chunk of culture if you avoided them.

Of course what they'll find is that few people are capable of paying for every single distributor's own walled-garden crappy site and all the piracy reduction that trended with the rise of Netflix' online service will start spiking upward again. Not that the media companies will acknowledge the correlation of course (at least not publicly) because why would you need more than just their service and their service is (individually) reasonably priced right?

Re:Progress of the Arts and Sciences

[Altrag]

My suspicion is that they do realize Netflix solved a problem, but they're not looking at the right problem because Netflix solved at least two:

1) A good amount of content that people wanted.
2) Lots of content that people didn't care about (or didn't know they cared about until they tried it,) but gave them something to put on when they were bored.

All of these companies think we'll happily pony up $10, $15, maybe $20 per month to each of them in order to continue solving problem #1. But that's not the real problem that Netflix solved. Problem #1 is already solved sufficiently well by piracy. Netflix addressing it as well makes for good press, but doesn't really sway subscribers to any large extent.

Netflix' big selling point is that they solved #2. None of the walled garden approaches will fix that since almost by definition, they will have small content libraries. To some extent cable solves #2 as well, but since 90% of the cable channels are useless filler, there's many times where there's plenty on but absolutely none of it is worth watching -- that is, the minute-by-minute "library" on cable is also extremely limited. (And of course with Netflix, you aren't getting blasted with commercials on top of your monthly payment, though that's a smaller issue in the grand scheme of things as most people are well adjusted to ignoring commercials by now.)

Re:Progress of the Arts and Sciences

[CrashNBrn]

Bullshit. This Disney "announcement" was a side-note in their last quarters earnings result.

Disney isn't concerned about a bunch of B-comics like Jupiters Circle.

More and more

[bferrell]

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

Re:More and more

[bferrell]

Maybe you should look at a bit of a distance... Not be so blindly literal.

As I said, it looks the same as in the 20s when the studios (Disney) vertically integrated the movie houses (their own distribution "channels"). Fox theaters weren't allowed to run Paramount or Universal films... Eventually the outlets were actually owned by Fox, Paramount, Universal etc.

While it's isn't Comcast or the internet in this instance, in principal, it IS the same thing.

Legislation was eventually passed disallowing this type of practice.

So sad I had to spell it out SO precisely.

My max is two paid streaming services

[Hadlock]

I don't have time or budget to deal with more than two paid streaming services. Billing, passwords, setting up and maintaining devices, etc is a real hassle.If it's not on either service, I am not going to watch it. Period.

I have Netflix, and I have Amazon Prime*

This is plenty, I can watch 99% of what I want, and if it's critically important (movie night with friends), we'll do a 24 hour streaming rental. Maybe when we have kids we'll dump netflix for disney, but until that day, we'll just stop watching disney movies. It's just not worth it as an adult with limited free time, a commute and other priorities.

*We do have HBO now, through Prime, but we're huge Game of Thrones nerds, and it bills/streams through the Amazon Prime app so it's pretty low hassle

Re:My max is two paid streaming services

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have time or budget to deal with more than two paid streaming services.

Really, all this fragmentation will kill the business. Without one stop shopping and reasonable prices, it's better to just go back to bittorrent.

Re:My max is two paid streaming services

[Anonymous Coward]

Same. I've got Netflix & Prime, I don't want to pirate, I like financially supporting the movies, music, books, and games that I enjoy, but I don't like where this is going. Maybe if their services are reasonably priced, I'll consider it, but you damn well know that everything is going to be as much or more than Netflix. Then the commercials will start coming, and you know they will, then just you wait and see, there will be premium subscriptions, and we'll be right back to square one. But hey, if the corporations just want to encourage piracy, that's not my problem.

Besides that, in Disney's case, let's not forget how much of their content would already be in the public domain if we had reasonable copyright laws.

Re:My max is two paid streaming services

[93 Escort Wagon]

Really, all this fragmentation will kill the business. Without one stop shopping and reasonable prices, it's better to just go back to bittorrent.

I've probably posted this before, but in any case - I fully expect the next several years to be really, really annoying for those of us trying to "do the right thing" and pay for content. Every entity which owns even a tiny piece of some popular show or movie is going to attempt to launch their own streaming service.

Eventually most of them will shut down after losing lots of money, and things will consolidate back to just a few aggregators - but until then it's going to be stupidly annoying.

In the meantime I'm not going to pay for a streaming service just for one show - not Star Trek, not Stargate, not Star Search. There's already more streaming content available than I could reasonably see in my lifetime.

Re:My max is two paid streaming services

[TheGratefulNet]

'do the right thing' went out the window decades ago.

the new game is: screw unto other before others can screw unto you.

or, restated, do whatever you can, ethics or not, as long as you make money. customer rights? not relevant. fair use? not relevant. DRM? yup, still there and still a PITA.

I gave up trying to care, anymore. the rich guys pay no taxes, have offshore accounts, make their own laws and we little people have OUR laws (which are enforced, unlike laws for rich folks and corps).

I look at all this and say: why is it that THEY get to bend/break rules and get away with it, and yet we're expected to just keep following the ones set down FOR US?

after I thought about it, I stopped wanting to be their fool and their sucker.

I torrent and could not care less about their profits or business model. they do whatever they want and they get away with it, and so I'll fight fire with fire and do whatever the fuck I want.

yes, its gotton to that.

Wow

[christurkel]

I just was thinking yesterday: Know what I need? Another streaming service in my life!

Sorry, Disney, you lose my "eyes", not Netflix

[PeterM from Berkeley]

No way am I going to sign up for Disney's streaming service. There are too many streaming services already and I'm going to stick with the successful ones that have the broadest offerings.

If I were Disney, I would be pushing for a fair revenue sharing deal. Push Netflix to share out their revenue to the content providers according to the fraction of time watched, and push Netflix to provide transparency so this can be audited. Netflix, in turn, should charge a reasonable delivery/infrastructure fee, and share out the revenue for content "blind" to where the content comes from. I.e., if their own content generation produces 30% of the viewing, their own content generation division gets 30% of the content revenue.

--PeterM

Vid Angel

[irrational_design]

I wonder if this has to do with the Vid Angel/Disney lawsuit and the recent workaround that allows Vid Angel to filter Disney movies on Netflix. By moving their movies off of Netflix, they effectively block Vid Angel again.

Not understanding how it's a blow to Netflix.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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,"

How is this a blow to Netflix. No shot in hell I'm paying for another streaming service just for Disney's dinky library. So this just means I will torrent the Disney movies and Netflix can free up some revenue for other movies or more original content.

Video Games

[darkain]

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.

Re:Wise of Disney

[93 Escort Wagon]

Thing is, it'd likely be cheaper to just buy the DVDs / Blurays of the Disney movies you want, rip them yourself and then watch them whenever you'd like.

We cut the cord for this?

[ZorinLynx]

Soon there will be so many streaming services that if you want to be able to watch everything you're going to pay more money than the cable subscription you canceled.

What the heck is the point? We're back to square one: It's too damn expensive, might as well pirate the content.

Save the moral arguments; it doesn't matter. There's a point where the cost involved becomes prohibitive, and people still want to see the content. Make of that what you will.

Fuck You, Disney.

[geekmux]

Netflix. HBO. Amazon. Hulu. And now, Disney.

You know, the reason people started cutting cords was due to the fucking cost being forced upon us. $100 split across half a dozen streaming services is just as financially painful as a $100 cable bill. I hope Disney finds a loss with this bullshit move.

Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2? Way to "innovate" with yet another channel full of fucking sequels. Gee, can't wait for Star Wars, Episode 27. How original.

fuck you disney

[gravewax]

I am no Netflix fan (in fact just cancelled after the latest price hikes and screw you's they gave to customers in Australia), BUT fucking Disney is just showing yet again their heads are wedged firmly up their arses and trying to continue the traditional distribution models and locking viewers out of anything but a very narrow option. I don't care what movies they have or that my family wants I will pirate them before I support such douchebaggery.

Re:Ala-carte disaster

[Rakarra]

What - wait - I thought you couldn't afford the rising cable/satellite rates! Now you can't afford a la carte?

If you think these various streaming offerings mean that you're not going to pay a hell of a lot more for them than cable, you're a sucker.
People were open and honest with what they really wanted with the success of Netflix: they wanted everything in one nice place for a reasonable price. For a number of years that's what we got. It wasn't customers who killed this model, it was the content companies.