Disney unveils huge cache of content, signaling it seeks to dominate both digital and theaters

“We launched the service last year with great ambition and high expectations,” Disney executive chairman Bob Iger told investors. “And we’ve exceeded them by every measure.” The company is so confident in the service’s prospects that it announced it will raise its monthly price by one dollar, to $7.99, beginning in March.

But the fact that such a robust showing was needed also highlighted some of the headwinds Disney faces, including from the pandemic and competitors. The presentation was a kind of rebuff to those who think Disney has been one-upped in the digital world by Netflix. The streamer has sought to position itself as a go-to for digital content but does not, Disney argued Thursday, have the brand reservoir or consistent glossy production that it does.

From a subscriber standpoint, Netflix is continues to win the streaming wars, with nearly 200 million global subscribers. But Disney chief executive Bob Chapek said Thursday that Disney Plus, launched 13 months ago, now has 86.8 million subscribers, suggesting it is both closing the gap and pulling away from the pack. (HBO Max, Warner Media’s service, has about 8 million unique subscribers.)

Disney’s 86.8 million marked a 13 million subscriber increase over the past month, fueled by a launch in Latin America.

Also in the Warner Media — and retort — department: Disney announced it has hired Patty Jenkins to direct “Rogue Squadron,” a new theatrical movie for 2023 from its Star Wars-centric Lucasfilm division. Jenkins’s “Wonder Woman 1984” was recently moved by Warner Bros. to HBO Max, one of 18 films over the next year that the company says it will debut on the service, in a move widely interpreted as forsaking the theatrical model.

Disney’s move seemed designed to tell the AT&T-owned WB that it still believes a robust theatrical market will be around in three years, and that Patty Jenkins would rather work for them to serve it.

Kathleen Kennedy, who runs Lucasfilm, told investors the movie will focus on a “new generation of starfighter pilots as they earn their wings and risk their lives in a high-speed thrill ride.” She suggested that it is theaters that will be the best place to experience it.

At a time when those theaters are in question, Disney cited an array of movies it plans to release in them — Marvel chief Kevin Feige, for instance, said that a “Black Panther” sequel that will pay tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman will arrive in theaters in July 2022. The company moved only one of its 2021 films, March’s lower-profile animation title “Raya and the Last Dragon,” to Disney Plus.

The company did suggest some of its movie divisions will be adding streaming to their portfolio. Hulu, executives said, will start serving up original films produced by the 20th Century Studios and Searchlight divisions. Previously both had been focused on theatrical releases.

Chapek acknowledged that coronavirus challenges and “changing consumer behavior” could affect the theatrical business and noted that “of the 100 new titles announced today, 80 percent” of them would go digital first.

“But we had $13 billion of box office last year and that’s obviously not something to sneeze at,” he said. “For us, it’s about balance.”

Disney made headlines at the start of the presentation by noting 10 new series each for its Marvel and Star Wars franchises and a combination of 30 movies and series from its Disney studio and animation operations, all for Disney Plus.

The real number is much higher once its 20th Television Studio, FX, Searchlight, National Geographic and ESPN services are factored in, as well as the Hulu and ESPN Plus platforms. There are hundreds of new shows and movies that seek to ensure Disney’s digital platforms (and theaters, when they return) are not just a place for endless re-watches of “Frozen” but a venue for reams of new content, even if much of it is a spinoff of old content. A sequel of the “Sister Act” movie franchise, for instance, will sit alongside a series based on the “Moana” movie, which will be complementary to an Obi-Wan Kenobi spinoff.

Disney also said it had announced a deal with Comcast, which owns Disney competitor NBC Universal, to make Disney Plus available on Xfinity, highlighting how important even rivals believe Disney content to be.

“You can surely understand why we’re so excited and so optimistic about the future of the Walt Disney Company,” Chapek said.

Investors were feeling equally heartened, sending Disney’s stock price up 4 percent over the course of the presentation.

But questions still hover over the company.

Executives nodded occasionally to the pandemic — Walt Disney Television entertainment chairman Dana Walden noted some production delays on a few of its shows — but mostly avoided discussing the virus, which has ravaged its theme-park and theatrical business and sent revenue plummeting.

The company lost more than $1 billion at its parks this summer and is poised to take in a tiny fraction of its 2019 box office this year.

And Disney Plus still won’t achieve profitability for three more years, raising the specter of several years of losses before its massive investment is repaid.

As he has from the beginning, Iger emphasized “quality, not volume” in the firm’s digital approach, differentiating it from Netflix. But as the evening wore on it became clear that the volume was also large, a fact Iger seemed to realize as well.

“The pipeline of original content we’re making,” he said as the presentation wound down, “is much more robust than originally anticipated.”