Netflix has 167 million subscribers around the world.
Disney’s key hook as a streaming service in an increasingly crowded market of such platforms is, of course, their historic and enviable back-catalog of properties. Their own slate is hugely impressive, with decades of titles to its name, and then there are myriad acquisitions, from Marvel Studios to Lucasfilm to 20th Century Fox. While Disney+ has put a lot of money into its original programming, most notably The Mandalorian and the Marvel TV series, the lion’s share of subscriber attention has fallen upon those pre-existing properties and nostalgic favorites.
Of course, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has led to Disney+ getting some streaming premieres far earlier than anticipated. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil on Disney+. Three of these films were some of the highest-grossing movies of 2019, and the addition of the sequel to Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning, now means that every theatrical release by Disney since January 2019 is on their streaming service.
This may not seem especially interesting or ground-breaking given that Disney+ exists to give the company an exclusive streaming home for their work, but it does speak volumes as to how the current market is working during this strange period in history. Despite some obvious fan interest, Disney is never going to release Mulan on Disney+ (theatrical releases are still the safest route to profit in cinema), so bringing forward the at-home releases of major 2019 titles keeps giving subscribers a reason to stay with the platform. This was probably a greater concern for the company once all of their productions shut down for streaming-exclusive titles like the Marvel series.
Disney has been heavily criticized over the years for its increasing stranglehold on cinemas, particularly with the rules they enforce before allowing their films to screen, but one thing they’ve always been praised for is their commitment to a wide theatrical release window. The gap between a film premiering in a cinema and releasing on DVD/VOD/streaming has gotten increasingly smaller over the past five years, something that theater chains have revolted against. This may have been a quarantine-only decision for Disney, a way for them to keep audiences interested as their release slate dries up for an indefinite period of time, but if it’s one that is paying off for them, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see the company commit to shorter theatrical windows in order to get their movies onto Disney+ quicker.
If Disney was ever to make that decision, then the entire way that theaters do business in 2020 will change irrevocably and possibly bring about the decline of the cinematic experience as a whole, a model that is now increasingly dependent on those nine-figure tentpole event movies that Disney has made its bread and butter. The long-term ramifications of such a decision remain to be seen. For now, it looks as though Disney+ are just happy to have something to keep subscribers coming back for more thanks to those new releases.
