And in what will be Disney Plus’ biggest film release so far, its megabudget Marvel movie Black Widow will be available to stream on Disney Plus for an extra fee the same day it hits theaters on July 9.
But the monthly rate of Disney Plus is still roughly half the price of HBO Max and compares with Netflix’s cheapest tier, which is $9 a month.
The Marvel original series, like almost everything on Disney Plus, is part of Disney’s standard catalog, so anybody who’s a Disney Plus subscriber can watch them.
With Premier Access, films cost $30 to unlock on top of the price you pay for a Disney Plus subscription.
Once you pay for a Premier Access title like Cruella, you can keep watching it for as long as your account remains active.
The price varies internationally in local currencies, but the value of the international prices is generally on par with $30.
Cruella is expected to be unavailable for purchase on Disney Plus in late July, a month before it joins the standard library any subscriber can stream.
But, like other Premier Access movies that came before, Cruella won’t become part of the standard catalog for three months.
Some people refer to this as the date Cruella will be “free” to watch, but everything on Disney Plus still requires a paid subscription.
For example, Disney and Verizon have a deal that gives a free year of Disney Plus starting on launch day to all the carrier’s customers with a 4G LTE or 5G unlimited account, as well as new customers of Verizon’s Fios and 5G home internet services.
Disney Plus’ US price deeply undercuts the $14 monthly fee for Netflix’s most popular plan in the US, which lets you stream to two different devices simultaneously in high definition.
Way back in 2017, Disney’s then-CEO Bob Iger noted that Disney Plus pricing at launch would reflect the “fact that it will have substantially less volume” than prime competitor Netflix.
The company also offers a bundle that combines Disney Plus with Hulu and ESPN Plus, offering a discount if you subscribe to all three of those streaming services for $14 a month.
The package with ad-free Hulu, Disney Plus and ESPN Plus will cost $6 more than the basic bundle — equivalent to the same cost increase you’d pay to step up from ad-supported Hulu to ad-free Hulu as stand-alone services.
And we won’t be able to make an educated guess about that until the company sets the streaming plan for Shang-Chi, the big Marvel movie that will precede Eternals.
During the pandemic, Disney Plus introduced its Premier Access model, which sells streaming access to new, big-screen movies for an additional $30 on Disney Plus at the same time they’re also available in theaters.
But as cinema restrictions ease and more people feel safe crowding into movie theaters, Disney is going to reintroduce theatrical-only windows starting in August.
While Disney has specified theatrical exclusives for some films, the company hasn’t clarified how its streaming plan will play out for movies like Shang-Chi and other megabudget movies like Eternals set to come out later this year.
But for some of its forthcoming movies, Disney is simply switching films originally planned for theaters to be Disney Plus originals instead, skipping theaters entirely.
Disney plans to flood Disney Plus and its other streaming services with shows and movies in the coming years, promising more than 100 new titles every year on Disney Plus and committing to spend $14 billion to $16 billion annually on streaming content across its services within the next four years.
That eye-popping budget meant Disney has announced a wave of new Star Wars originals, tons of Marvel projects and an exhausting lineup of new shows and movies.
Disney Plus is already streaming the brand’s first TV movie, Miraculous World: New York – United HeroeZ; the second TV movie, Miraculous World: Shanghai-The Legend of Lady Dragon is supposed to arrive later this year.
As for big-screen movies, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed how Disney releases its new movies on Disney Plus — and the new normal isn’t exactly clear yet.
Disney Plus is designed to be the exclusive home to stream theatrical films, shows and shorts from Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Disney’s own studio and National Geographic.
With the elimination of Disney Plus’ free trial last year, potential subscribers can’t sign up to check out the catalog without having to pay first.
Disney Plus also integrates programming from Fox.
Generally, Disney Plus houses the entire film libraries of Pixar, Star Wars and its Signature Series and Disney Vault lines of classic hand-drawn animated movies.
Because of previous licensing deals, it’ll be a long time before Disney Plus is an exhaustive library of all Disney movies.
It’s first major original was Star Wars spinoff The Mandalorian, a big-budget series starring Pedro Pascal that takes place five years after the events in The Return of the Jedi and focuses on a bounty-hunting gunfighter.
But, for example, a Taylor Swift film that goes behind the scenes of the recording of her Folklore album is one of the Disney Plus originals without any existing ties to Disney as a company.
Disney Plus has original documentaries, reality shows, competition series, behind-the-scenes features, nature and adventure titles, animated programming — the list goes on.
Disney has wide device support, streaming to phones, tablets, computers, connected TVs and streaming media boxes.
The app for streaming boxes, like Roku and Apple TV, is also designed to briefly flash a symbol telling you the format that you’re watching; it appears in the upper right corner of the screen for a few seconds when a video begins to play.
Every Disney Plus account can stream to four devices simultaneously and can create seven user profiles for different members of the household.
Subscribers can download to up to 10 mobile or tablet devices, with no constraints on the number of times a title can be downloaded.
These kids profiles limit the library to programming that’s rated TV-7FV and G in the US, or the equivalent ratings in other geographic markets.
Disney Plus has launched in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, France, Portugal, Belgium, Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, India , Indonesia and Japan.
Elsewhere, Disney Plus is continuing its global rollout, now under the umbrella of a new international streaming service from Disney, called Star.
The initial launch of Disney Plus came less than two weeks after Apple TV Plus rolled out.
If you keep the subscription, it will automatically start charging the $7-a-month rate through your Verizon bill.
Disney Plus is a competitor to video streaming services such as Netflix, HBO Now and Apple TV Plus.
Disney Plus includes all of Disney’s family-friendly content and much of its mass-audience fare — basically, anything made for audiences up to a PG-13 rating.
For example, two series originally planned for Disney Plus — High Fidelity and Love, Victor — were moved over to Hulu instead because of their more mature themes.
The top two movies of 2017 and the top three movies of 2016 and 2018 were all from Disney, and Netflix was the place to binge them all.
That means Captain Marvel, the first movie Disney released theatrically in 2019, is the first movie on Disney Plus instead of Netflix.
It affects movies released between January 2016 and December 2018, which includes Marvel titles like Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War; Star Wars hits like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and The Last Jedi; and Pixar staples like Finding Dory, Coco and The Incredibles 2.
At that point, Disney Plus will have built a large permanent library of original content, and it’ll continue to funnel all its newest releases to Disney Plus and nowhere else.
But the terms of their original deal could restrict Disney Plus from any revivals until 2020, according to a report.