New home for more adult fare from Disney+
By Greg O’Brien
TORONTO – For those determined to look at new things the old way, you could say Disney+ is launching a new channel today with Star.
However, with over 150 TV series and more than 500 movies at launch, increasing to nearly 800 by the end of 2021 – which will also include exclusive Star original content – there’s a lot more to watch than on a TV channel, as we reported in January.
The titles are generally those which don’t fit under the mostly kid-friendly existing Disney+ brands of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic, so that means the platform’s parental controls also launch today. Like other streamers, the account holder can set up household viewer profiles with PINs and limit the genres and ratings of programs kids in the house can watch (Avengers, yes. Deadpool, no, to cite a Marvel example).
A higher price also comes to Disney+ today with the arrival of all this new content. Canadian customers can subscribe to Disney+ with Star for $11.99 per month (which is $3 higher than it has been), or $119 annually. The $8.99 price for existing subscribers (prior to February 23) will be honoured for six more months. Greg Mason (pictured), vice-president of marketing for Walt Disney Studios Canada, told Cartt.ca in an interview on Monday the company believes a $3 increase is reasonable since the addition of Star nearly doubles the amount of content available to Disney+ subscribers.
Looking at the massive list of titles added, there’s also a fair bit of overlap with some titles which air or stream on other outlets. For example, How I Met Your Mother, is on Star and Netflix in Canada. 9-1-1 can be found on Global, StackTV and now Star. Spinoff 9-1-1 Lone Star can be found on
CTV, CTV.ca, and now Star.
What does that mean for the Canadian broadcasters who own the rights to hit shows and who will want to continue to buy from Disney? Nothing now, according to Mason.
“We have great partnerships with Canadian broadcasters and we’re going to continue those,” he said. “Our content has various places it can live – some will be exclusive, and some will not be exclusive.
“I can’t really speak to one particular property because quite honestly, I don’t know all the individual agreements, but our home is going to be Disney+ and long-term, that is where we would like the bulk of our series and movies to live, but we still think that there are great opportunities to support Canadian broadcasters and services as well,” Mason continued.
“The Canadian broadcasters are important partners of ours and we’ve got to respect that and work closely with them to make sure we have the right balance.” – Greg Mason, Walt Disney Studios Canada
“The Canadian broadcasters are important partners of ours and we’ve got to respect that and work closely with them to make sure we have the right balance.”
New Star originals, however, will be exclusive to that channel. “We’ve got great partnerships with Bell, Rogers and Corus. We do so much with them on so many different levels and we’ll continue to do that, but it’ll become more apparent we’re going to have Star originals that are not going to be anywhere else – new, unique content that we never were able to offer it before because it was more general adult content,” added Mason, pointing to the Frances McDormand movie Nomadland as a Star exclusive coming on April 9th, alongside a theatrical release in Canada at the same time.
Mason also wanted to make sure to note the rising level of filming Disney is doing in the country. While saying he wasn’t the guy to speak to what Bill C-10 (which means to modernize the Broadcasting Act and aims to bring streamers into a new regulatory regime in Canada) might mean for Disney, the company is ramping up filming here – and ramping up telling people about it.
“I don’t think that many people have talked about (Disney+ filming in Canada) too much. We’ve only been out for a year and a few months at this point in time and we have shot seven movies and one series in Canada. We shot Home Alone in Longueuil Quebec, we shot Mighty Ducks in Vancouver, Noelle in Vancouver and Whistler, Secret Society of First Born Royals in Toronto, Sneakerella in Hamilton, Timmy Failure in Surrey, Togo in Cochrane (Alta.), and Flora & Ulysses in Vancouver.
“We love our Canadian crews and the talent and all the businesses that supports it up here. We are investing, continuing to invest a ton into the Canadian landscape and it’s important to us,” he continued.
“I’ve never seen so much filming in Canada from our company than in the past year and change. And it really is a testament to what this country can deliver and the opportunities that exist here.”
