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

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.

Comments

And like that, nobody cared.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:And like that, nobody cared.

[Midnight Thunder]

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.

Re:And like that, nobody cared.

[mentil]

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.

Re: And like that, nobody cared.

[Zocalo]

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.

Disney-

[mentil]

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