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Disney is getting ready to launch it's own streaming service later this year and while the company has been largely tight lipped regarding what we'll actually get when Disney+ launches, beyond a few officially announced original productions, during the annual Disney shareholder meeting today CEO Bob Iger confirmed that every film in the Disney library, including those movies normally locked away in the "Disney vault" will be on Disney+. either at launch or shortly thereafter. According to Iger...
At some point, fairly soon after launch, it [Disney+] will house the entire Disney motion picture library, so the movies that you speak of that have traditionally been kept in a vault and have been brought out basically every few years, will be on the service.
The biggest bullet in the Disney+ gun is that the studio has an impressively big, and impressively popular, collection of movies that have been released over the decades. However, how much of that we were going to see on Disney+ was never made clear.
Now that the streaming service has officially launched, you can sign up for a free trial by using this link.
Back in the days before home video, Disney would routinely re-release its popular animated classics in theaters every few years so that new generations could experience them. The studio was originally apprehensive about the home video business, fearing it would cut in to those regular box office profits. In the end, Disney compromised and started to release its classic films on VHS, but it would pull them off of shelves after a while and put them back in the "Disney vault" for a few years, then bring trhem back. That process has remained largely intact since the 1980s.
This led to the question from a Disney stockholder during The Walt Disney Company’s 2019 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Did the Disney vault mean that some Disney movies would not be available on the service? The answer is no. It sounds like the vault is being emptied and closed for good.
In addition to those films, everything else produced by Disney will be on the service. We know that Disney has existing deals with Netflix as well as the Starz cable channel. The movies committed to those platforms won't be on Disney+, but it sounds like the plan is to move them over as soon as those commitments are done. Bob Iger also revealed that every Disney movie being released in 2019, From Captain Marvel to Star Wars Episode IX, will be on Disney+ within the first year of the service.
Confirmation that there are no plans to hold anything back from Disney+ is sure to get people excited. If you want to binge watch the entire history of Walt Disney animation, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Frozen II, you'll be able to do that within a year of the service starting up, and you'll be able to watch most of those films probably on day one.
More details on Disney+ were not revealed at the meeting today, but a previously announced meeting April 11 will likely give us all the specifics we're waiting for, like a specific release date, subscription cost, and more information on the launch day content.
