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Credit: Inside the MagicJust as Disney CEO Bob Iger promised, the Disney+ and Hulu streaming services have been officially merged, dropping hundreds of R-rated movies and mature TV shows on the formerly child-friendly app.
As we previously reported, creating a single, very expensive service for all of Disney’s streaming services is a top priority for Bob Iger. When Disney+ was launched in 2019, it was promoted as a remarkably cheap streaming service that would have all of the company’s classic movies and animation (with one very notable exception), along with Marvel Studios, Pixar, Lucasfilm, National Geographic, and more.
The service was initially offered at a monthly subscription price of $6.99, which made it incredibly competitive with the dominant Netflix and able to offer more family-friendly content than the likes of HBO Max (now just Max), Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, and the rest.
Related: Disney Permanently Removing Shows for Hulu-Disney+ Merger
However, Disney+ has struggled to become profitable ever since it first debuted; the Walt Disney Company’s annual financial disclosures revealed that it was losing shareholders millions of dollars every year and solvency is nowhere in sight. Even worse, the streaming service lost over 14 million subscribers in 2023, which is revenue the company can not afford to go without right now.
Disney CEO Bob Iger’s solution is simple from a corporate perspective. The current plan to make streaming profitable is to push Disney Bundle hard, encouraging customers to sign up for a combination of Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, ideally with ads. While that is just an option right now, it’s also clear that the next step is to combine all those services, so subscribers are basically stuck paying for content that they do not necessarily want.
Beginning today, Disney is merging Disney+ and Hulu, meaning that all the R-rated content intended for the latter service is now part of the former. For most Disney+ subscribers, Hulu content now shows up as a tile alongside Marvel and Star Wars, which will undoubtedly cause a flurry of sudden parental control settings around the world. Hulu content is being added to Disney+ via emails associated with both services and will also automatically adjust content and playback for ad-supported tiers.
Disney is very aware that Disney+ subscribers did not sign up to get the hundreds of R-rated movies that make up a huge portion of Hulu content and is already working to minimize backlash from parents who might not want their children to suddenly have access to say, the Paul Verhoeven lesbian nun drama Benedetta (2021) or the gory Australian revenge thriller The Nightingale (2018).
Related: Disney Admits Heavy Financial Losses Due to ‘Woke’ Content, DeSantis Lawsuit
The company has released a short video on how to add even more parental controls to the newly merged Disney+ and Hulu, which can be seen here:
Disney is being very careful to let subscribers know that this new merger of streaming services is in beta and that the full integration of the two will not occur until March. However, the R-rated content has already been added, meaning parents have to start dealing with it now.
Disney+ and Hulu being merged is only the first step in pushing subscribers to take on a full Disney bundle. The new form of Disney+ will undoubtedly include encouragement to sign up for Hulu, Hulu Live TV, ESPN+, Disney Bundle Duo, Disney Bundle Trio, Disney Bundle Trio Basic, and basically anything else that the company can figure out how to bundle into a bloated charge.
Do you want Hulu content on Disney+? Are the current parental controls sufficient? Let us know in the comments below!