Look out Apple TV+, Disney is here with Star Wars, Toy Story, The Avengers, The Simpsons, and more for $7/month
Just weeks after Apple announced its plans for a TV streaming service to rival Netflix, another of the world’s biggest companies announced a competing service. Later this year, Disney will be launching its own subscription filled with content from the many, many intellectual properties it now owns.
Remember that in addition to the beloved family movies Disney has been churning out for decades, the House of Mouse also owns Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, and – thanks to a recent acquisition – 20th Century Fox. Disney has recently been stripping its content from other services, and will presumably have exclusivity over almost everything produced by those companies. We already know that it will be streaming all 30 years of the Simpsons on Disney+.
The company has also confirmed that new movies will be released on the service the same day they become available for home release, meaning less friction if you miss the latest blockbuster at the cinema. Previews show that the interface of the Disney+ app will borrow a lot of familiar cues from Netflix, with features like algorithm-led recommendations, offline viewing, and parental controls.
Disney+ will launch November 12 in the US for just $7/month, with a global rollout to follow. That seems like a decent deal considering Netflix subscriptions start at $9 and rise to $13 if you want to stream in HD. Apple has yet to reveal pricing for TV+, though we’d expect it to be around the $10 mark.
All this makes Disney uniquely positioned to enter an already crowded streaming market, and we see it as real competition for Apple’s entry into the game later this year. With users increasingly feeling subscription fatigue, for many people, this will be a straight toss-up between the two new services. We wouldn’t want to bet on a winner.