Disney has now reached a deal with NBCUniversal that will give them majority control over Hulu, NBC will have still have a 33% stake and will license their content until at least 2024. After that Disney will have the opportunity to buy them out. While it might not be great to see Disney taking over something else, as long I can still watch NBC, ABC, and Fox shows on Hulu I'm not going to be to upset.
I don't quite understand why Disney wants Hulu considering they're starting Disney+ later this year. The article has them saying something about gaining control of Hulu fitting in with their "direct to consumer" model. I thought that was what Disney+ was for.
Think of it as the streaming versions of Disney and Touchstone. Disney+ will be where all the kid safe, family friendly stuff will be (Star Wars, Marvel, animated movies, etc) and Hulu will be where the more adult oriented material will be (Fox's catalog with franchises like Die Hard and Alien, Handmaid's Tale, etc).
I was wondering where they were going to put all that stuff that wasn't appropriate for Disney+, I guess we know now.
Twice the streaming services owned twice the $9.99 a month fees! I love that monolopies are back and that corporations are people! USA! USA! USA!
Where does Spotify fit into this? A week or two ago I got a random notice on Spotify that my membership was now combined with Hulu.
Who has a monopoly? There are still several major motion picture studios (Disney, Warner Brothers, Universal, Paramount, Sony, MGM, am I missing any?) and more streaming services than you can shake a stick at. If anything, streaming services are the OPPOSITE of a monopoly. There are starting to be too many and could use a culling. Spotify worked out a deal with Hulu where Hulu is now included with a Spotify Premium subscription.
Wonder if they let you merge accounts or if I just have to cancel and lose the history. If Hulu merges with Disney+ under one payment I’d be okay with that. Fewer subscriptions needed to watch all the things.
Again... what monopoly? Amazon Prime, Netflix, CBS All Access, Hulu/Disney+, CW, Starz, HBO Go/Now, BritBox, Tubi, Crackle, FX Now, DC Universe, Showtime Now, Youtube Red/Premium, IMDB Freedrive, Apple's streaming service, Xfinity Stream, Spectrum's service, Sony Crackle, Boomerang, WWE Network, PureFlix, Redbox Instant, and those are just a FEW of the available streaming services. There is no monopoly in streaming. At all.
You wanna split hairs?! Fine. Hollywood's been an oligopoly for decades now, almost as long as the film industry exists. But in the last decade, Disney has made strategic moves to become the monopsonic force of the market. And looking at the movie business, they've pretty much succeeded. Thanks to Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, the live-action remakes of Disney classics, and now FOX, they have nearly eliminated the competition in big budget movies. WB and Universal might still be their biggest competitors, in theatrical releases at least (and more on that later), but they still don't even come close to Disney's market share. Paramount and Sony are clinging on, but even MGM is pretty much dependent on co-productions and lower budget movies. What's more, Disney has made aggressive moves to hurt the other movie companies. They've staked out the most lucrative release dates for years, and continue to do so. WB has announced a Batman versus Superman movie?! Let's put the third Captain America movie against it and use most of our Marvel heroes in it to make it as much of an event movie as possible. See, WB budged and moved to another date. FOX won't let go of their Marvel licences? Let's downplay the comic books they have the movie rights for, cancel them if need be. What's that, WB just had a massive success with Aquaman? Let's take a break in Star Wars movie and then release the first one in years in direct competition to their sequel. Now, to be clear, this is all about the business side. The creative people actually working on the movies are quite friendly to one another, actually congratulating each other when they have success. And business-wise, all the movie studios are evil corporations. But Disney, with their buying spree and aggressive moves against the competition, seems to have a strategy of hurting the competition enough for those to be forced to put parts of their companies, if not their entire companies, up for sale, and then buying those. Disney appears to have the goal of becoming a monopoly, and the trend is certainly going that way. The question is, who owns those streaming services? If two of the top five streaming services (and Disney+ certainly looks to be going to be in the top three) are owned by the same company, which coincidentally is the same company having a monopsony on big budget theatrical movies, the same company owning the biggest comic book publisher, as well as owning the most lucrative licences (plural) for merchandising), then yeah, that is worrying. Also, Netflix briefly got bigger than Disney as a media production company, and it appears to have made Disney determined to harm Netflix. Looking at the big budget productions they've already announced, coupled with a very low subscription rate, it looks like Disney+ will be using the same strategy as Amazon (and Walmart before that) did in regards to retail competition, using their own financial security to do unlucrative pricing in order to drive the competition out of business. While Disney might not want to drive Netflix and other streaming services out of business, they certainly appear to want to take a similarly monopsonic position in streaming as they already do in the movie business. I also expect Disney to continue its buying spree in the streaming world, buying up other services.
Even if you can subscribe to them together, I'm pretty sure they'll stay separate. I don't if it's been officially announced, but the impression I've gotten is that they'll use Hulu as a place to put their more adult stuff that won't fit into the family friendly tone they're going to give Disney+.
To be honest I thought this deal had already been done awhile back. I am guessing we also know where future "Deadpool" stuff will be at, now. Jason