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Disney's New Netflix Rival Will Be Called Disney+, Launch Late 2019 (cnbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the streaming-fragmentation dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Disney's new streaming service will be called Disney+ and launch in late 2019, CEO Bob Iger announced on the company's earnings call Thursday. The service will also feature new, original shows and movies, including original Marvel and Star Wars series. Marvel fan favorite character Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, will get an original series on the Disney+ service. A prequel series to Star Wars movie "Rogue One" about the character Cassian Andor, portrayed by Diego Luna, will also call the service home.

Other original shows and movies include a rebooted version of The High School Musical franchise. It will also be a hub for animated content, including the next season of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" and an new original animated series based on Pixar's "Monsters Inc." Exclusive movies include "Noel," a Christmas movie about Santa's daughter played by Anna Kendrick, and "Togo," a movie about the 1925 Nome Serum Run starring William DaFoe. Disney launched a placeholder website for Disney+ that shows off logos of brands like Pixar, National Geographic and Marvel. Last year, Disney announced that it would remove all its movies from Netflix in 2019 to entice consumers to use their own streaming offering. It also purchased Fox for $71.3 billion to bolster its library of content.

16 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. And like that, nobody cared. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're too late disney. Go back to licensing to others.

    I for one won't be paying 5 different video sites just to get the films/shows I want. Seriously all of you, sort it the f*ck out and cross-license.

    1. Re:And like that, nobody cared. by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I had the mod points I’d vote you up. Fed up of the new format where it is all about exclusive licensing. Almost makes want to to back to Blu-rays or less official sources.

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      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    2. Re:And like that, nobody cared. by mentil · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Don't worry, with all the M&A going on in the US, soon we'll just have ONE media conglomerate, and it'll be $129/mo. + tax + fees for the privilege of accessing their stuff. Required Internet connection sold separately, additional data rates WILL apply, offer void in Your State.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    3. Re:And like that, nobody cared. by gerald.edward.butler · · Score: 3, Informative

      Disney cartoons/shows (not the old stuff, but, the modern stuff since the 90's) is the most insidious, destructive shit you can have your children watch. This shit should be banned from your household. Give you kids something to do. Don't let them sit for hours watching the crap that is Disney. No it is not Family Friendly. It is insidious garbage designed to turn your children into mindless consumers.

    4. Re:And like that, nobody cared. by Gilgaron · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Depends on the price point... Netflix is $8-$12 a month. If they are at the same price they may not do any better than you're predicting, but this is Disney... they sell toys and tickets to theme parks, big movies in theatres, their content is advertising for merchandise. If they sell the streaming just barely above cost I think they'll win big. If they could sell it at $3 or $4 a month without losing their pants then everyone with children will end up being subscribers. Prime Video has some cool kids programs, but you don't see T shirts at Target with Tumbeleaf characters on them.

    5. Re: And like that, nobody cared. by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's a la carte and a la carte. What most consumers wanted was the ability to pick specific channels - or even shows - from a single menu that was more nuanced than bundles of channels under banners like "Drama", "Movies", "Sports", and so on; why pay for all the drama channels if you only want to watch CSI, for instance? All this new model does is change those bundles from types of shows to vendors of shows - "CBS", "Disney", "HBO", and so on - consumers are still being asked to pay for bundles that contain multiple shows they have no interest in.

      When cord cutting meant Netflix and/or Amazon Prime and most content people cared about could be obtained there using something approaching to the a la carte (PAYG) model they wanted all was good; the use of BitTorrent, Kodi hacks, and other alternative means of acquiring content even went into decline. Then every man and his dog with studio decided that they wanted to cut out the middleman rather than just license content to multiple providers like Amazon and Netflix because it meant a little more projected profit, and we're back to square one - screw the consumer. Needless to say, the use of BitTorrent etc. is climbing again, and I hope it continues to do so - maybe if it wipes out enough studio's projected profits they'll see the light and we might get a true one stop shop a la carte system. Of course, since this is Hollywood we're talking about, that's probably about as likely as the average Disney plot.

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    6. Re:And like that, nobody cared. by mjwx · · Score: 4, Funny

      You're too late disney. Go back to licensing to others.

      Foresaw this I did, listen you did not. Buying up all the licensed media they did, control they gained. Now channel they launch. Back to the old days we go, packaged subscriptions we get. For Fox or Star Wars, extra you must pay.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    7. Re:And like that, nobody cared. by mjwx · · Score: 3, Informative

      Don't worry, with all the M&A going on in the US, soon we'll just have ONE media conglomerate, and it'll be $129/mo. + tax + fees for the privilege of accessing their stuff. Required Internet connection sold separately, additional data rates WILL apply, offer void in Your State.

      For those of us not on FinanceDot... M&A means "Mergers and Acquisitions". Post was spot on though.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    8. Re: And like that, nobody cared. by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      By comparison Disney owns the Marvel, Pixar, *and* Star Wars franchises (amongst others), all of which have a large overlap in popularity with those who watch Trek. Should Disney decide to stream all series from those franchises on Disney+ one day before general release to cable, etc., then I can easily see them being the service that many will pay for then mop up the few other shows they watch from less legal sources.

      Those were once nerdy franchises, to be sure. However, I'm done with Star Wars until there's a major shift in creative control, Marvel is getting stale, and Pixar has been in a drought for a long time.

      Not to say they won't make money, but I think the "News for Nerds" audience is moving on.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    9. Re:And like that, nobody cared. by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Exactly, fragmentation and inconvenience will simply drive users to piracy...
      Subscribing to one service for all your shows and movies is ok for most people, having to subscribe to a bunch of different services is a hassle people don't want, and that's assuming all of the services are available in your location and on the devices you have.
      Thepiratebay on the other hand provides all content and is usable on all devices,

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    10. Re: And like that, nobody cared. by MachineShedFred · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nope. Sorry. You can call this mess "a la carte" if you would like, but you would be wrong.

      The concept of a la carte television was to pay vastly reduced rates for only the channels we want - no bundling in 30 channels of crap nobody every watches in order to subsidize the 4 channels people care about, and the option to not pay for expensive channels that you don't want.

      What this is, is being forced to subscribe to multiple bundles of bullshit you don't want just to see the few shows that you do. It's no different, except for being a useability nightmare - oh, I want to watch $SHOW, is it on Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, Disney+, HBO Now, CBS whatever, etc. etc. At least with cable, it was all one shitty cable box that had a single guide, rather than having to search, launch something else, search, launch something else, search, ad nauseum.

      The market won't put up with this bullshit, and piracy will rise. Netflix and Hulu were successful because they had content from across the industry available, and it worked. This shit will barely move the needle from what they get from additional cable bundle subscriptions.

      The lesson of Napster / Limewire was not learned by the movie studios, so they are doomed to repeat it. The more fragmented and locked down they make it, the users will reject it and go another way, legal or not.

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      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  2. Disney- by mentil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Darn fragmentation, I don't want to have to figure out if the shows I want are on Kodi, Popcorn Time, or Pirate Bay. /s

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  3. The race to kill streaming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    These companies - CBS with CBS All Access, Disney with Disney+, and others think they are cashing in on the content that they own. Instead they are ushering in the demise of streaming. When a potential viewer of content could access a majority of these things via one or maybe two services - as just an example let's say via Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming - they were willing to pay. We've seen the proof of that in the numbers that have come out about legal streaming vs. piracy. But, lock your content up behind multiple different proprietary content vendor streaming systems (want to watch Star Trek - you need CBS, want to watch Star Wars, you need Disney) then people are going to just go back to pirating the content. Who is going to sign up for 5, 6, or more services? Who is going to ever sign up for CBS All Access? Who is going to sign up for Disney+? Sure, a couple of people will. Not enough to sustain their business plan though. They will simply be limiting the potential legal viewership for their content. Disney+ starts in 2019. It shutters its doors in 2024. You saw it here first.

  4. Re:Walking backwards into the future by Gilgaron · · Score: 3, Informative

    What you're describing is pretty much Amazon Video... free with Prime stuff, plus paid videos for rent or purchase. In practice it 'feels' like somebody trying to nickel and dime you, Netflix's user experience is better without it.

  5. WILLIAM DaFoe? by tsqr · · Score: 4, Informative

    OK, the error is in TFA, not from Slashdot editor BeauHD. But how about a correction, or at least a [sic], in TFS?

    For the record (and those who are in the same boat as BeauHD and the CNBC hack who authored TFA), it's WILLEM. Willem DaFoe.

  6. And the part that should be scary, but... by Mnemennth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... nobody is even talking about:

    "Last year, Disney announced that it would remove all its movies from Netflix in 2019 to entice consumers to use their own streaming offering. It also purchased Fox for $71.3 billion to bolster its library of content. "

    mnem

    And then there were none.