SALT LAKE CITY — Disney will soon end its vault program, which will almost certainly gives the company a leg up in the upcoming streaming wars.
- Disney will lift its entire “vault” program when it launches Disney Plus later this year, which means the streaming service will carry any and all animated films that it has released, The Verge reports.
- Disney CEO Bob Iger told shareholders Thursday that Disney Plus will have films that “traditionally have been kept in a ‘vault’ and brought out basically every few years.” Iger said this would happen “at some point fairly soon after launch.”
- In the past, Disney has sparingly re-released new films before putting them back in “the vault.”
- “Disney initiated the practice as a way to control its own market and drive up demand whenever it did release a new edition of an old classic,” according to The Verge. “But the policy has led to frustrated customers, who often have to pay a high premium for used Blu-rays or DVDs of the films that aren’t available at any given moment.”
Why it matters: Fast Company explained that “in today's world, where consumers are accustomed to watching whatever they want to watch, whenever they want to watch it, a practice that's been codified by companies like Netflix, Disney's vault strategy feels antiquated.”
But now, Disney might finally have a leg up in that it will add an entire library of content to its platform, according to The Verge.
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More: Iger said newer Disney films will also join Disney Plus within the first year of the film’s theater run, Polygon reports.