Disney Details New Streaming Service Disney+, Announces Ambitious Content Slate

By Adam Weddle  |  April 12, 2019 | 12:18pm
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Disney Details New Streaming Service Disney+, Announces Ambitious Content Slate
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Disney has revealed details for its long-awaited streaming service Disney+, which is set to officially launch on Nov. 12, 2019. The service will feature popular movies and series from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic, along with an impressive slate of brand new original content.

Disney’s chief executive Robert A. Iger revealed the company’s plans for the service at a presentation at Soundstage 2 on the Disney lot in Burbank, Calif., on Thursday. Iger announced that the service would cost just $6.99 a month, $2 cheaper than Netflix’s most inexpensive plan, and it will roll out in all parts of the globe during its first year on the market.

Nearly the entire Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars catalogs will be available to stream on day one of the service, along with Disney’s Signature Collection and a selection of family hits like Alice in Wonderland and Mary Poppins. Disney+ is also set to feature a handful of family titles from its recently acquired Fox catalog, including The Sound of Music, Malcolm in the Middle and the first 30 seasons of The Simpsons.

Disney+ will also launch with 5,000 episodes of Disney Channel series and 100 Disney Channel Original Movies (hello, millennial nostalgia), along with 250 hours of content from National Geographic. That includes the Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo and a new series called The World According to Jeff Goldblum, which involves Jeff Goldblum and therefore requires no additional explanation.

Iger also gave a first look at the 10 original films and 25 original series set to debut on the service in its first year. Perhaps chief among them is a new live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian helmed by Jon Favreau, and a second, still-untitled series that serves as prequel to the events of Rogue One, with Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk reprising their roles as Cassian Andor and the droid K-2SO, respectively.

Disney+ will also feature multiple Marvel Cinematic Universe spinoff series, including Loki starring Tom Hiddleston, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier starring Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, WandaVision starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, and Hawkeye with Jeremy Renner.

Among the original films coming to Disney+ in its first year are a live-action Lady and the Tramp remake, a new Phineas and Ferb movie, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series about a real-life high school’s production of a musical inspired by the classic Disney film, a new film directed by Academy Award-winner Tom McCarthy called Timmy Failure, and a new holiday film starring Anna Kendrick and Bill Hader called Noelle. Disney+ will also release Togo, a new original film starring Willem Dafoe about the real-life journey of a man and his lead sled dog through the Alaskan tundra, within the first year of the service’s launch.

Also set to debut during the first year of Disney+ is a new series based in the Monsters, Inc. universe titled Monsters at Work. Billy Crystal and John Goodman are set to reprise their roles as Mike Wazowski and Sulley alongside several new characters. The series will reportedly be set six months after the end of Monsters, Inc., when Sulley and Mike discover that children’s laughter creates more energy than screams.

Disney+ users will be able to create individual profiles and curate their content settings to create a highly personalized experience. All content on the service will also be downloadable, allowing users to access their favorite films and series offline. Disney expects total subscribers to reach 60-90 million by 2024.

The writing is on the wall—Disney is about to change the entire streaming entertainment game—and we’re reminded of a scene from an IP the House of Mouse now owns, a category that grows more all-encompassing by the day.

 
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