Content reduction is underway at Disney, as dozens of series have will soon be removed from Disney+ and Hulu, an individual with knowledge told TheWrap.
Several titles, including Disney+’s “Willow” and “Big Shot” and Hulu’s “Dollface” and “Y: The Last Man,” will no longer be available to stream globally beginning May 26.
Impacted titles that will soon depart Disney+ include “The Mysterious Benedict Society,” “Big Shot,” Turner & Hooch,” “Willow,” “The Making Of Willow,” “Just Beyond,” “The World According To Jeff Goldblum,” “The One And Only Ivan,” “Timmy Failure,” “Be Our Chef,” “Magic Camp,” “Earth To Ned,” “Foodtastic,” “Stuntman,” “Disney Fairy Tale Weddings,” “Wolfgang” and “It’s a Dog’s Life With Bill Farmer.”
Likewise, Disney will remove Hulu titles “Pistol,” Dollface,” “The Quest,” “The Hot Zone,” “Y: The Last Man,” “Maggie,” “Little Demon,” “The Premise,” “Love In The Time Of Corona,” “Everything’s Trash,” “Best In Snow” and “Best In Dough.”
The news, which Vulture first reported, comes just a week after the entertainment giant announced during its quarterly earnings call its plans to remove “certain content” from its streaming platforms in a cost-cutting move.
“We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation,” Disney Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy said during the call.
McCarthy also unveiled Disney’s plans to “produce lower volumes of content,” marking a strategic shift from the company’s original goal to flood “the so-called digital shelves” when Disney+ launched three and a half years ago. While Bob Iger explained this plan’s intent to push along subscriber growth, the Disney boss noted during the earnings call that the company “realized that we made a lot of content that is not necessarily driving sub growth.”
The former strategic plan also left marketing spending to be “spread so thin,” according to the Disney head, who noted that the company would be more “surgical” in content decisions rather than “spending a lot of money marketing things that are not going to have an impact on the bottom line.” Instead, Iger noted that freeing up these budgetary constraints would enable Disney to focus on tentpole projects that are “great” subscription drivers, including “Avatar,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “Indiana Jones” and “Elemental.”
