Disney+
Disney Plus Launch: As of November 12th, 2019 Disney+ is a player in the streaming wars. Within its first five days of launch, Disney+ gained over 10 million subscribers. This is already a fifth of HBO’s total subscribers in the United States (54 million) and quickly gaining on Netflix’s 60 million subscribers in the US. So how is it that within 5 days Disney plus was able to get so much done and what does this mean for the future of television? This May, Netflix surpassed Disney and Comcast to become the world’s largest entertainment company, while Disney quickly regained the title the message was clear, Netflix was shooting for the top slot. Disney purchased Pixar, Marvel, ESPN, National Geographic, Star Wars, and Fox leading up to that point and has released 8 of the 10 highest-grossing films in the last 10 years.
On the other hand, Netflix invested over 14 billion dollars last year in making original content and saw only a few of its productions succeed. So Disney is pulling its content off the sight along with Warner Brothers, Universal, NBC, and CBS. Disney’s aim in restructuring its business model to create and distribute its own content is primarily to cut out the middle man that is taking in considerable prophets that should be theirs. So while this change will take time, if it happened right now Netflix would lose 8 of it’s 10 most popular TV shows and 10 of it’s 10 most popular movies. People likely won’t be canceling their Netflix subscriptions any time soon as the sight still has most of its content signed on for a couple more years. So the question is whether Netflix will be able to replace enough of the going shows and movies with its original content before it is too late.
By: Ben Butcher
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