Disney Drops Movie Deal With Netflix, To Start Own Streaming Service

The increasingly competitive field of streaming services is about to become even more hard to breach as Disney announces its plans to pull out all their movies from Netflix and launch its own streaming service by 2019 and a separate ESPN streaming platform in 2018.

While Netflix is the leading platform for streaming video, a couple of other platforms go head to head with the streaming giant while also offering the same set of titles and original content. The new media has recently shifted from traditional revenue streams and begun to rise up with a couple of other companies in the streaming field. Amazon Prime and Hulu, for example, have also proven to be one of the main threats to Netflix’s dominance.

Disney Pulls Out From Netflix

With this in mind, it seems that Disney is gearing up to the streaming action as well. According to a press release by The Walt Disney Company, the company is putting their A game on as they prepare to launch two separate streaming services. Disney will remove all of its movies from Netflix and move them to their own new platform. The report says that they are targeting a 2019 launch.

Disney is also working on a separate streaming platform for ESPN. It would ultimately offer up live streaming events from NBA, MLB, college sports, tennis and additional sports-related programs and content. Disney CEO Bob Iger released the following statement:

“Today we announced a strategic shift in the way we distribute our content. The media landscape is increasingly defined by direct relationships between content creators and consumers, and our control of BAMTech’s full array of innovative technology will give us the power to forge those connections, along with the flexibility to quickly adapt to shifts in the market. This acquisition and the launch of our direct-to-consumer services mark an entirely new growth strategy for the Company, one that takes advantage of the incredible opportunity that changing technology provides us to leverage the strength of our great brands.”

Other Disney properties such as Marvel and Star Wars have been doing really well as it continues to break records. It’s obvious that Disney is flourishing in the box office sector. And with this bold move to come up with their own streaming service, it could only mean more profits and revenue for the company. Netflix, on the other hand, takes this as another huge blow. After shedding off a couple of their TV and movie titles in their catalog to other streaming services, the company is also trying its best to keep up by producing original content. It’s tough to even imagine the removal of films like “Star Wars” and “The Avengers” from Netflix’s  list, and so we can probably anticipate how Netflix will amp up its ante following this huge news.