With Disney’s Move to Streaming, a New Era Begins
In a research report, Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen
and Company, summed up Disney’s streaming plans, especially for movies and television, as “aggressively” pushing “the traditional content business into terra incognita.”
Underscoring the uncertainty, Disney’s shares declined by more than 4 percent on Wednesday, to $102.83.
In a statement on Tuesday, Netflix said, “We continue to do business with the Walt
Disney Company on many fronts, including our ongoing deal with Marvel TV.”
Notably, Netflix has been building up a huge original movie operation, including spending the $90 million “Bright,” a forthcoming Will Smith movie.
As part of its announcement on Tuesday, Disney said
that it would spend heavily on original programming for its entertainment streaming service and pull future Disney and Pixar movies from Netflix.
LOS ANGELES — Disney set off a sonic boom in Hollywood by unveiling plans to start two Netflix-style services: For the first time in the streaming age, the world’s largest media company had decided
that embracing a new business model was more important than clinging to its existing one.
It’s not the end of Netflix.”
Disney’s streaming plans call for the introduction early next year of a subscription service to be built around ESPN’s sports programming.
Amazon last year acquired a significant amount of PBS’s library of original series to exclusively stream on its service,
and Netflix has said it expects to have 75 original children’s programs by the end of next year.
