Disney, after removing dozens of shows and movies from Disney+ and Hulu last week, said it will incur a $1.5 billion impairment charge for the June quarter. In an SEC filing Friday, the company said that on May 26, 2023, it removed “certain produced content” from its direct-to-consumer streaming services.
Disney's Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy announced this on an earnings call saying that the company is revising its costs and strategy. Removing streaming content is a move we recently saw Max (formerly HBO Max) make as a cost-cutting measure.
As reported by Deadline, a slew of titles on Disney+, including Big Shot, Clouds, Diary of a Future President, and The Mysterious Benedict Society are leaving on May 26th. On the Hulu side, shows such as Dollface, Maggie and Little Demon will vanish on that same date.
Heaps of original content, including Willow, Black Beauty (2020), and Y: The Last Man, will be pulled from Disney's streaming platforms on May 26th. By Jess Weatherbed, a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture.
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Why is Aladdin not on Disney?
There are a number of Disney films that require a disclaimer about "negative stereotypes" on its streaming service. Disney has added a content advisory warning to well-loved family films, such as 1992's Aladdin, that says the stereotypes "were wrong then and are wrong now".
Disney is gearing up to remove series and specials from streaming platform Disney+ and Hulu, an exercise similar to Netflix, as per reports. Around dozens of series and special will exit Disney+ and Hulu on May 26. These will include direct-to-streaming films, specials, and short-lived series.
This month, we are bidding farewell to the first three seasons of TV shows like Bordertown and Midnight Diner, and parting ways with films that are old favorites, like Collateral Beauty starring Will Smith, the animated Rango, '80s classic My Girl starring Macaulay Culkin, Barbershop 2: Back in Business (Keke Palmer's ...
Disney removed the original series from its streaming service in May. The eight-episode first season premiered November 30, 2022 and concluded on January 11, 2023.
The original announcement from Disney CFO, Christine McCarthy, explained the reason behind the decision to move Willow away from the service: "We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC (direct to consumer) services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation.
As Disney's CFO, Christine McCarthy, announced on the second-quarter earnings call: “We will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion.” (An “impairment charge” basically means a loss in value of a certain asset.)
One answer is that it's a cost-cutting measure: removing content from their libraries enables streamers to write them off as losses at tax time and pay out less in residuals – the fees paid to actors, writers, directors, and other creatives when TV shows and films are broadcast.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, the number of global Disney+ subscribers increased to 150.2 million. However, this marked a decline of 14 million compared with the same quarter of the previous year as the Indian brand Disney+ Hotstar, in particular, reported subscribers losses.
Walt Disney Co. said it will acquire a 33% stake in Hulu from Comcast for at least $8.6 billion, a deal that will give Disney full control of the streaming service. Disney has run Hulu since 2019, when Comcast ceded its authority to Disney and effectively became a silent partner.
That means that subscribers can count on a healthy library of classic titles in addition to new monthly releases from the studio. However, the Disney Plus library is not permanent.
The titles on the way out in June 2023 include Denis Villeneuve's 2017 neo-noir epic Blade Runner 2049, the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot movie Death on the Nile (2022), and the first three V/H/S movies, V/H/S (2012), V/H/S/2 (2013), and V/H/S: Viral (2014).
Director Frank Darabont's underrated Stephen King adaptation “The Mist” exits on June 21, while the end of the month brings the exits of “Jerry Maguire,” “Puss in Boots,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” a pair of “Resident Evil” movies and Brad Pitt's pretty-ok zombie actioner “World War Z.”
These removals are due to licencing deals coming to an end. Often, the titles make their way back to Netflix in the following year, but sometimes they leave to go to other platforms.
Those fees are paid to the owners of that content and they end up being the primary cost for streaming services. That means when Disney removes shows, they can save money by not having to pay those licensing fees.
Disney+ just got a little more adult. The streaming service added its first R-rated films in the US on Friday with “Deadpool,” “Deadpool 2” and “Logan.” The movies star Marvel superheroes, but as their ratings suggest, they're decidedly not kid-friendly.
But the stated reasons for these removals aren't tax write-offs and cost cutting, which has impacted streaming shows in the past. Instead, these shows have reached the end of their licensing agreements and Hulu made the decision not to renew the agreements.
Disney+, HBO and Netflix are the hardest hit: financial pressures mean they're commissioning fewer shows, while Amazon, Apple and Paramount are staying the course. And for upcoming shows such as Django, the spectacular Western on Sky Atlantic, European money from Canal+ is topping up the budget.
The channels' fade to black on Spectrum is the result of a dispute over carriage fees between Disney and Charter Communications, which owns Spectrum. Thursday night, Disney pulled programming for its stations — including ESPN, ESPN2, Freeform, Disney Channel, FX and National Geographic — from Spectrum.
Titles such as Willow, Dollface, FX's Pistol and Y: The Last Man are among the first round of shows to be pulled, they confirmed. Disney+'s Howard was initially reported to be pulled, but a Disney rep clarified to us that it was never meant to be taken off the platform.
