The Disney boss has set ambitious goals for the streaming business.
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(Photo: AP)
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San Francisco Disney + is currently the only ray of hope in the world’s largest entertainment group – so it is only logical that Bob Chapek should focus on it at the beginning: The in-house streaming service currently has 86.8 million subscribers, he said Disney– Boss at the California company’s investor day.
That’s almost 14 million more than in October and exceeds all expectations Disney had before the start in late 2019. At the time, Disney was expecting 60 to 90 million subscribers in 2024.
In all other areas, the corona pandemic hit the Disney group hard. Its theme parks are closed in many places, Disney keeps postponing theatrical releases or brings them directly to Disney +. The streaming service, on the other hand, benefits from the fact that people are stuck at home in many parts of the world.
That is why all the major film and television groups are radically aligning their strategies with streaming. A few days before Disney’s event, Warner Media presented: The parent company of the Hollywood studio Warner Bros wants to publish its entire film offering in the USA in 2021 in cinemas and on its HBO Max service – including blockbusters like “Matrix 4” and “Dune” .
Hollywood reacted with theatrical anger: the director Christopher Nolan (“The Dark Knight”) scolded that stars like him went to Warner to work with “the best film studio, not the worst streaming service”.
Also because of Nolan’s cinematic sensitivities, Warner had his film “Tenet” in the cinemas in the summer – but hardly anyone in Europe and the USA had gone because of the pandemic.
Warner is now using the emergency to turn himself inside out: Instead of hoping that the cinema business, which is actually lucrative for studios, will come back soon, the subsidiary of the US telecom group is pepping up AT&T with their blockbusters their own Netflix-Competitors.
More than 100 new titles a year
Disney doesn’t want to go that far: “Black Widow”, a spin-off from the extremely successful “Avengers” universe of the Marvel Studios, will hit theaters in the US on May 7th. Disney can do even less without the cinema revenues than other film companies. “We earned $ 13 billion at the box office in 2019,” said Chapek when asked by an analyst. “That’s really no sticking out of paper.” You will remain flexible whether you bring a film to the cinema or streaming.
Instead, Disney is aiming to attract new subscribers with a barrage of new series: In the coming years alone, ten Star Wars, ten Marvel and 15 Disney and Pixar series are to come on the service, plus films and series from Disney TV channels like ABC or FX. “Our goal is more than 100 new titles a year,” said Bob Iger, long-time Disney boss who now leads the board.
The more than four-hour presentation is peppered with stars and big stories from the universes that Iger strategically bought together over his 15 years as Disney boss: the series “Obi Wan-Kenobi”, which will be the rematch between the one played by Ewan MacGregor from March Jedi Knights and Darth Vader shows. Or “WandaVision” from the Marvel universe, which will be shown on Disney + in January.
Above all, Disney is introducing a new service that goes beyond the child-friendly brand of the Mickey Mouse group: From February 23, there will be an area called “Star” within Disney +. There, Disney brings together TV dramas from its US television stations such as ABC, FX or the US streaming service Hulu or films from 20th Century and Searchlight. That includes series classics like “Grey’s Anatomy” and newer hit series like the science fiction thriller “Devs” or “The Handmaid’s Tale”, which is entering a fifth season.
Disney also announced new series that will run exclusively on “Star” in Germany: the crime comedy series “Only Murders in the Building” with Steve Martin and Selena Gomez, a drama series about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes with Kate McKinnon or a “Rolling Stones” documentary with bestselling British author Nick Hornby.
Disney is using the launch of “Star” to raise the price of Disney + for the first time in March: in Europe from seven to nine euros a month, in the USA from seven to eight dollars. This means that Disney + is still well below the subscription price for Netflix ($ 14) and HBO Max ($ 15).
Bigger than Netflix
However, the price increase is also a creeping admission that the original strategy for Disney + no longer works in the pandemic. Actually, the cheap service should bind fans to Disney’s universes. The big sales should then bring fan articles, cinema and amusement park visits to Burbank.
But because the other parts of this proverbial Disney flywheel get stuck in the pandemic, Disney + has to support itself faster. As a new global subscriber target, CFO Christine McCarthy stated 230 to 260 million by 2024 – around three times as much as originally thought and more than the 195 million that Netflix has today.
Instead of an annual content budget of two billion dollars, Disney + plans to invest eight to nine billion dollars a year. But because 30 to 40 percent of subscribers are in India and generate little revenue, the loss of the streaming business will only increase in the coming year. Disney + should then be profitable from 2023.
With its new streaming strategy, Disney is declaring the “star war” for market leader Netflix. The traditional group wants to move closer to the challenger from Silicon Valley not only in terms of the number of subscribers. With “Star”, Disney is expanding its offer to adults who tend to end up on Netflix because Mickey Mouse or Star Wars do not enchant them.
And Disney is betting that fans won’t get tired of stories from their beloved fantasy worlds when they see several series and films from them every year. “The focus will always be on quality, not quantity,” said Iger. “The only difference to our films will be the length.”
More: Netflix boss Reed Hastings in an interview: “We admire Disney, we have respect for Disney, we want to be better than Disney.”
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