Disney is about to upend the entire streaming ecosystem by launching Disney+, the much-anticipated “Netflix killer.” Disney’s streaming service will be the “forever home” of all of its enviable pop-culture intellectual property — including Marvel and Star Wars, and all of their attendant films and TV shows, past and future.
When Netflix launched, it had its pick of the litter when it came to streaming deals: It was, after all, the only game in town. Then, the competition arrived and started to grow. A big part of the problem for Netflix is that its newest streaming rivals aren’t just tech companies — many are media giants looking to consolidate their TV and movie firepower behind their own services. Just as original content helps Netflix operate more efficiently, it also makes sense for content owners to create streaming services — if Netflix makes “original shows,” these show and movie owners are creating “original streaming services.” It’s the same formula in reverse.
Netflix may be losing a lot to Disney+, but the reverse is also true. Disney+ will reportedly launch with some films in its library that will later disappear, at which point they’ll be available on Netflix.
Disney inked a streaming deal with Netflix for those titles before realizing its the extent of its own streaming ambitions. It’s a fairly simple sequence of events that leads to an amusingly counter-intuitive result — and a pretty unfortunate one, from Disney’s perspective. It was supposed to be pulling the rug out from under Netflix, losing titles to its strongest rival in its first few months as a streaming service isn’t exactly what Disney was hoping to see.
Disney is being tight-lipped about the awkward reality — the company isn’t saying which films are going to disappear. The most we know is that, according to CNET, one deal will move “popular movies from 2016 through 2018” to Netflix for roughly six years.
