In what is just a sad statement on the devastation caused to the movie theater industry by the Coronavirus pandemic, Disney announced that their live action “Mulan” film will be skipping theaters altogether and moving straight to Disney Plus on September 4th (story HERE).
And in just a sad example of greed, it will be available for an additional $29.99 to existing Disney Plus subscribers.
With that decision, Disney Plus joins ESPN Plus in charging additional fees to streaming subscribers.
We could be patient with Disney’s decision to charge additional costs for UFC fights on ESPN Plus. It could be considered an unfortunate anomaly.
But the decision to make us throw $30 dollars more to have to start seeing additional material on Disney Plus makes that a disturbing trend.
What are we doing here?
It’s also a unfortunate for the Mulan film, which looks promising, and was once in position to lead the charge of American family audiences back into theaters (story HERE).
Instead, it’s just going to be an experiment and one that is a horrible buy for small house-hold Disney Plus subscribers that won’t see the investment in paying $30 to watch the movie alone or with a single partner. That’s a markup of 30 to 60 percent on the box office.
And then there was “Artemis Fowl”, a dud of a movie meant to spawn a franchise that would have made audiences furious if they had to pay additional fees to watch it at home. Like Mulan, it was also supposed to open in theaters and was checked down to streaming.
Releasing “Mulan” at an additional cost to already paying subscribers is bad business and takes the shine off of that great bundle that includes Hulu and ESPN Plus for a single and reasonable cost.
Disney needs to do better.