Early last month Disney officially announced that they would be severing ties with Netflix and moving ahead with the launch of their own branded streaming service set to arrive in 2019. At the time of the announcement, it was unclear as to whether or not Disney’s slate of Star Wars and Marvel films would remain accessible via Netflix or possibly receive their own respective streaming service.
We now know the final decision on this topic as Disney CEO Bob Iger has revealed that the Star Wars and Marvel franchises will in fact be moving over to Disney’s new streaming service.
Iger also stated that he expects the new streaming service, which will have an assortment of movies and TV shows created exclusively for this platform, to be launched sometime at the end of 2019.
“We’ve now decided we will put the Marvel and “Star Wars” movie on this app as well,” Iger said during a question-and-answer session at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
Iger also narrowed the time frame when the Disney streaming service will launch, saying he expects it will go live in late 2019.
So how much overall Disney content is expected to eventually be made available via this new streaming service? The Hollywood Reporter gives us the following estimated numbers.
Iger told the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2017 Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference in Los Angeles that the studio will produce four to five original films for exclusive use on the planned Disney app, mostly live action. And around 500 films from the Disney library will show up on the direct-to-consumer platform, in addition to around 7,000 episodes of Disney TV fare.
