Disney Names Its Streaming Service Disney+, Reveals New Marvel and Star Wars Series

Have you ever had one of those days where you go “Man, getting rid of my cable has been way too inexpensive, I really wish there were like, a dozen streaming services I could pay $15 a month for to make up for all the money I’m not spending on cable anymore.” Yeah, neither have I, but it’s certainly what entertainment companies think people are saying. There are three separate services just for pro wrestling. Seriously, three.

Economics are starting to catch up with some “boutique” streaming services. The comedy-themed Seeso and Korean programming service DramaFever both went under in the past year. You’ll never convince me that Star Trek: Discovery wasn’t a last-ditch effort to save CBS All Access, which before that was basically just trying to convince people to spend $6 a month for 5 rotating episodes of The Big Bang Theory. The Orville is better anyway and it’s on Hulu.

We’ve known for a while that Disney was going to move into the streaming space, which was their motivation for buying Fox. While Disney is touting the family-friendly streaming service, which they revealed today will be called Disney+, as an alternative to Netflix, it seems more like it’s going to be The Disney Channel but with Star Wars and Marvel stuff. In fact, today’s press release was almost all Star Wars and Marvel.

Iger also announced that Lucasfilm is in development on a second Star Wars live-action series for Disney+ that will go into production next year. The series will follow the adventures of Rebel spy Cassian Andor during the formative years of the Rebellion and prior to the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Diego Luna will reprise the role of Andor, which he originated in the 2016 film.

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Disney+ is also assembling a live-action series centered around a fan-favorite character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Iger today confirmed that Marvel Studios is developing a series based on Loki, the god of mischief, to star Tom Hiddleston.

If you’re counting, that’s three Star Wars series and three Marvel series. They paid billions of dollars for these properties and by God they’re going to squeeze every penny they can out of them. I have a feeling that played a part in Disney starting this streaming service to begin with; there’s really no reason these shows couldn’t have been on Hulu, which Disney is going to have a 60% stake in. But if Star Trek fans are going to pay $6 a month for a streaming service that literally only has three shows, then Star Wars and Marvel fans will probably line up around the block to pay extra for this.

The surprising thing here is that Disney clearly has the ability to create a service that would actually compete with Netflix instead of another boutique service, which is what this is. If you don’t like Star Wars or Marvel, there’s really nothing to see here. They’re remaking a lot of Disney movies from the 80s like Honey, I Shrunk The Kids and Three Men and a Baby, but that’s about it. Ironically, it won’t actually have Star Wars, the streaming rights for the first six movies are held by Turner for another five or six years.