The highly-anticipated SVOD Disney+ will launch in the US on November 12 for US$6.99 per month, the Walt Disney Company team unveiled yesterday at its Investor Day presentation. The international roll out will continue over the next two years, but no specific territories and dates have been announced yet.
Some of the new ad-free programming, just announced yesterday, includes live-action Marvel series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and WandaVision; animated series Marvel’s What If…?; Walt Disney Animation Studios documentary series Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2; Pixar’s Toy Story animated short series Forky Asks A Question and short film Lamp Life; National Geographic’s doc series The World According to Jeff Goldblum and Magic of the Animal Kingdom; and Disney Television Animation’s animated film The Phineas and Ferb Movie (working title).
All of this new content will join several Fox titles, including all 30 seasons of The Simpsons on launch day. Throughout the first year several more Fox titles will be added such as The Sound of Music, The Princess Bride and Malcolm in the Middle.
During the presentation CEO Bob Iger also noted that at launch Disney+ will include 18 Pixar films, 13 animated classics from the Disney vault, all Star Wars films, Marvel titles such as Black Panther and Captain Marvel, 250 hours of National Geographic programming, 100 Disney Channel original movies, and nine exclusive originals. The company also revealed that it plans to spend slightly more than US$1 billion in fiscal 2020 on exclusive originals for the SVOD. It’s a big year for Disney at the box office including Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, Aladdin, Toy Story 4, The Lion King, Frozen 2 and Star Wars: Episode IX—all of which will exclusively stream on Disney+ a few months after the theatrical release.
Disney has previously announced plans for several new series, including a whole slate of unscripted and spin-offs like Star Wars’ The Mandalorian, The Clone Wars and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.
It will be available on connected and mobile devices, including gaming consoles, streaming media players and smart TVs. The user interface features branded Disney, Pixar, Marvel, National Geographic and Star Wars zones, as well as Netflix-esque “recommended for you,” “trending” and “because you watched…” sections. It operates very similarly to its SVOD competitors with a menu and search bar along the side, and rectangles featuring movie and TV posters under each category that show previews when hovered over.