The competition may soon be over, as Disney is now crafting a deal with Netflix to feature some of its content on its rival streamer. CEO Bob Iger revealed that the two companies are in talks about a licensing deal. However, it won’t include the House of Mouse’s major franchises: Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar.
During the Q4 earnings calls, Iger revealed (via Variety) that these “core brands” are Disney’s “competitive advantages” and “differentiators.” Hence, there’s no way that it would give its rights to a competitor. He continued that these three have been doing well on their platform, and he can’t see any reason to license them out when they’re the “important building blocks to the current and future” of their streaming service.
This move is part of Disney’s plan to cut its budget on content from $27 billion this year to $25 billion in 2024. Iger is pushing “quality over quantity” and returning Disney to its heyday before COVID-19. After the pandemic, the business executive admitted leaning into making more content to boost Disney+, which affected its projects’ quality. “We lost focus,” he said, adding that the standards that Disney set for itself suffered.
What happened between Disney and Netflix?
Netflix used to have the rights to stream several Disney titles until their licensing deal ended when the latter launched its own streaming service, Disney+. In 2017, Disney ended its distribution deal with Netflix and introduced its new streamer in 2019.
It was a huge blow for Netflix back then after securing a valuable streaming deal with Disney in 2012. At the time, streaming wasn’t the thing yet, and the business only boomed in the latter years. So, Netflix might haven’t benefited from it that much.
However, this new deal seemed to oppose Iger’s remarks in 2022. At the time, he told The New York Times in January 2022 that licensing anything to Netflix would be like “selling nuclear weapons technology to a Third World country” that would be used against them.
The competition may be over, and a lot of Netflix users who are also Disney fans will benefit from this. It’s quite understandable that Disney won’t let its biggest and most profitable franchises be streamed on another service, knowing it has its own. But who doesn’t want to see any Marvel or Star Wars content on Netflix?
