The Big Picture
Disney is getting ready to make a deal with Netflix to ship off some of its original content to its rival streamer. At today’s Q4 earnings call, CEO Bob Iger revealed that the two companies were in talks regarding licensing more shows and films from the Mouse House’s catalog. Whatever Disney does share with Ted Sarandos and company won’t come from its core IPs, however.
“We’ve actually been licensing content to Netflix, and are going to continue to,” Iger told investors during the call. “We’re actually in discussion with them now about some opportunities, but I wouldn’t expect that we will license our core brands to them. Those are real, obviously competitive advantages for us and differentiators. Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, for instance, are all doing very, very well on our platform, and I don’t see why, just to basically chase bucks, we should do that when they are really, really important building blocks to the current and future of our streaming business.” Netflix and Disney previously linked up to share a few films and Disney Channel originals, but those have dried up considerably as Disney+ has established a foothold in streaming.
The move marks a bit of a reversal for Iger who seemed to loathe the idea of sharing anything with Netflix. He previously said in a January 2022 interview that licensing anything to the Sarandos-ran streamer would be tantamount to “selling nuclear weapons technology to a Third World country, and now they’re using it against us.” In April, he changed his tune somewhat, though he’s still a far cry from where other executives are when it comes to licensing. David Zaslav, for example, has been aggressive about sending content made for HBO or DC out to everything from other streaming services to FASTs, a process that accelerated after he began purging shows from the platform formerly known as HBO Max. Even bigger films, like Man of Steel and Justice League, are being loaned out to Netflix.
Disney Is Trying to Move Back Toward Streaming Profitability
Iger has likely seen licensing as a path toward getting Disney back into the green when it comes to streaming. The House of Mouse has made moves that have slowly stemmed the bleeding, including taking a page directly from Zaslav’s book by purging content in order to take a $1.5 billion USD content writer-off charge. Perhaps the company could look at removed shows like Willow or Big Shot – which are currently doing nothing locked in the Disney vault – as ones to license. There’s no indication of exactly what will be on the table for Netflix to bolster its own catalog.
Stay tuned here at Collider for more on what the Disney and Netflix deal will bring. In the meantime, take a look at all the original content coming to Disney+ throughout this month.
