A Disney+ subscription will cost $6.99 per month when it launches this Nov. 12, The Walt Disney Company has now confirmed. That's nearly half of Netflix's standard $12.99 plan.
The video streaming service marks Disney's aggressive push into the video-on-demand market, and signals its readiness to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon Video, and Hulu, three of the most dominant services at the moment.
Disney+ Details Revealed
As Variety notes, the company is betting that it can rapidly grow a subscriber base with a robust lineup of exclusive content that appeals to different groups of people, including movies and TV shows from its Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar — and more recently, Fox — brands.
The company formally announced the pricing, launch date, and other details on Thursday at Disney's 2019 Investor Day. Getting viewers onbaord is its topmost priority, which explains why it set a $6.99 price point.
"This is our first serious foray in this space, and we want to reach as many people as possible with it."
In the United States at least, Disney will offer an optional annual plan for $69.99, which works out to just $5.83 per month.
Disney+ Launch Content
At launch, Disney+ will offer 7,500 episodes of current and off-air TV shows, 25 original series, 10 original movies and specials, 400 library movie titles, and 100 recently released films, confirms Agnes Chu, Disney+'s senior VP of content.
Among that lineup are all 30 seasons of The Simpsons, a Disney+ exclusive. Disney obtained the rights to show The Simpsons through its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, so expect movies it's distributed to end up on the service, as well. By its fifth year, Disney expects to have an annual production slate of some 50 originals, according to Chu.
At the conference, Disney also mentioned that the service stands to lose as much as a billion dollars in 2020 before meeting expected profitability in 2024. By the sound of that, Disney is willing to lose that much cash just to take on Netflix and other streaming rivals. For customers, that means less chances of price hikes within the first few years of Disney+.
As Disney+ starts with zero subscribers, Netflix enjoys 139 million paying customers from all over the globe, but it's also spending billions every year to produce original content. Disney already boasts an incredible wellspring of content on hand, and there's no doubt that viewers will rapidly trickle in. Suffice it to say that the true video streaming war has officially started. Make sure to check back with Tech Times as we learn more about Disney+.
