Disney Plus launched to huge fanfare last month, with the latest addition to the so-called ‘streaming wars’ boasting an impressive amount of content that includes heavy-hitters like The Simpsons, Pixar and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, along with the overwhelming majority of the studio’s extensive back catalogue of both live-action and animated features.
Despite reportedly signing up to ten million subscribers, Disney Plus doesn’t exactly boast an overwhelming amount of brand new content, seemingly content on selling the service on the strength of the Mouse House’s existing properties. Without a doubt, the most heavily-hyped original project was The Mandalorian, which was marketed to fans as a must-see due to its status as the first live-action TV show set in the Star Wars universe.
The series largely delivered, too, scoring enthusiastic reviews and praise for the production design and performances, although the whole thing was almost overshadowed by the Baby Yoda phenomenon, which has dominated the internet ever since the little green guy was first glimpsed at the end of the first episode.
However, with The Mandalorian’s rookie season ending with the eighth and final installment in a little over two weeks, many subscribers are set to cancel their subscriptions to Disney Plus, feeling that there isn’t enough of an incentive to keep shelling out for the service once the sci-fi series wraps up, despite pre-production on the second season being well underway.
The case being made by fans is that without The Mandalorian, and none of the MCU shows set to debut until next year, there’s little reason to keep paying for something that doesn’t have much lined up in terms of exciting new content. You can see their point, too, as the vast majority of Star Wars diehards will already own all of the movies on DVD or Blu-Ray, and at this point virtually everybody has already seen all of Marvel Studios’ output as well.
The current Disney Plus library is geared much more towards families at this point, which isn’t surprising given the nature of the Disney’s output over the years, but it takes time to build a new streaming platform from the ground up, and the array of titles available on the service is only going to grow stronger in time.
