Disney recently confirmed that they plan on making exclusive streaming content their number one priority in the future, which is just as well because the Mouse House’s platform is painfully light on original movies and TV shows that have the potential to grab the headlines and capture the imagination of the public.
Hamilton was a massive success that was the most-watched title on any streaming service throughout July, but apart from the filmed version of the beloved musical and The Mandalorian, there’s not really been a lot of high profile titles added to the library this year. Mulan may have brought in a huge amount of revenue after being locked behind a paywall, but Niki Caro’s live-action remake generated the opposite kind of publicity from what the studio were hoping for.
Disney Plus can’t just rely on Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe to power their in-house lineup forever, but they might have to after viewing figures revealed that The Mandalorian is five times more popular than anything else available on the platform. While that isn’t surprising given that the show is a genuine cultural phenomenon, other services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video tend to have a handful of concurrent buzzworthy projects at any given time instead of relying on just one.
“Disney+ might as well rebrand as The Mandalorian Channel.” – @pkedrosky $DIS pic.twitter.com/lGDf7oZRwK
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) November 16, 2020
Pixar’s Soul is almost guaranteed to pull in decent numbers when it arrives on Christmas Day given the company’s longstanding reputation for churning out some of the greatest animated movies ever made, but the next show that could rival The Mandalorian in terms of popularity is unsurprisingly the MCU’s WandaVision, which only reinforces the notion that Disney Plus really needs to start expanding and diversifying their roster of originals.