Disney+ launches in North America in just over a month (it’s already available in the Netherlands), and with it, the premieres of The Mandalorian, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, as well as 600-plus episodes of The Simpsons and every Star Wars movie. Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure better be included, too, otherwise I’m not signing up. Meanwhile, Marvel fans have to wait for the complete Marvel Cinematic Universe (it’s complicated) and shows like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and Hawkeye, which are expected to debut in 2020 and 2021. They’re taking a while, because they cost a pretty penny:
Disney is sparing no expense on programming, projecting a 2020 original content budget short of $1 billion. The Mandalorian is said to cost $15 million an episode, for instance, and a source pegs Marvel entries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and Hawkeye at as much as $25 million per episode.
Remember when HBO forking over $8 million for “Battle of the Blackwater” was a big deal? Now $15 million, which is approximately what every episode in the final season of Game of Thrones cost, seems tiny compared to $25 million/per for Marvel’s small-screen selections. No wonder Disney+’s monthly subscription price isn’t expected to last long:
Over the course of the nearly four-hour presentation, executives unfurled their strategy for the service and revealed [the] price of $7 per month, significantly lower than Netflix’s standard $13 monthly fee and (later) bested only by Apple TV+’s $5 monthly price point… “They can’t survive at $6.99,” says [Jeffrey Cole, director of the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future], suggesting that at some point the price will go up. That may be one way that Disney expects the service to reach profitability by 2024.
I’d say “good luck, Disney,” but something tells me they’ll be fine.
(Via Hollywood Reporter)
