We’re just days away from Mulan debuting exclusively on Disney Plus, and the latest in the Mouse House’s long line of live-action remakes of their animated classics has gone from being one of the most highly-anticipated movies of the year guaranteed to do massive business at the box office to becoming one of the most hotly-debated, after it was pulled from most theaters and is now being sent straight to the studio’s in-house streaming service for a one-off fee.
Some fans are thrilled that they’re able to see Mulan from the comfort of their own home without having to risk a trip to their local multiplex, while others are annoyed at being asked to pay $30 to see a movie on a service that they already pay a monthly subscription fee for. Theater owners were furious, too, and you can completely understand why, with an industry still in the embryonic stages of reopening losing out on the lucrative revenue stream that comes with one of the biggest titles of 2020.
Of course, we already know that customers who use Disney Plus Premier Access to purchase Mulan will own Niki Caro’s epic for as long as they subscribe to the service, and the movie’s pre-order page on the app has now revealed that it will be added to the content library for free exactly three months after it debuts next Friday, which is a relatively short window for a $200 million action-packed adventure.
Let’s not kid ourselves and deny the fact that as soon as Mulan lands on Disney Plus, it’ll instantly become one of the most heavily-pirated movies in history, as fans desperately try to avoid paying the $30 fee. And by the time those three months are up and it becomes free to watch, anyone willing to shell out the extra cash to see it will have already done so long before then anyway.
