Mulan’s move to Disney Plus proves how quickly the pandemic forever changed entertainment

Disney’s live-action adaptation of Mulan will be released on Disney+ on September 4th for $29.99, the company announced today.

Disney executives walked through the new plan for Mulan’s release during an earnings call with analysts last week. The $30 fee will be on top of the $6.99 subscriber fee for Disney+ customers. The company told Insider that the $30 acts as a purchase — as long as people subscribe to Disney+, they’ll be able to access the film. Chapek also made it seem like non-subscribers can pay $30 for the film as well, but The Verge has emailed Disney to confirm.

“We thought it was important to find alternative ways to bring [Mulan] in a timely manner,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek said. In countries where Disney Plus is not available, Disney is releasing Mulan in theaters on the same date. The new release date follows Warner Bros.’ announcement that Christopher Nolan’s Tenet would get a staggered release. Tenet will open in approximately 70 international territories on August 26th before getting a limited release in the United States on September 3rd. It will go city by city in the United States as the country battles climbing coronavirus cases.

Mulan has faced a bumpy road. The film was originally supposed to be released on March 27th, got pushed to July 24th, and was delayed again to August 21st. Having Mulan on Disney Plus should help Disney a little, but whether it performs the way Disney needs it to remains unclear.

Source: Deadline

The Take (via Deadline)

Disney has essentially created a video-on-demand portal within its own streaming service, which will give Disney 100 percent of sales revenue, 100 percent control over how people watch the movie, and 100 percent of user data.

“We’re very pleased to be able to bring Mulan to our consumer base that has been waiting for it for a long, long time as we’ve had to, unfortunately, move our theatrical date several times,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek said on an earnings call.

Moving Mulan, a film that, in pre-COVID times, may have generated north of $1 billion at the box office, to Disney+ is a radical shift for the entertainment industry. While Chapek told analysts on the call that Disney is “looking at Mulan as one-off,” a Disney source told The Verge that “we put in enough work behind the scenes that this is definitely not a one-off.” Even with the new distribution path, Mulan isn’t likely to make what it would have in pre-coronavirus times, but it’s a new option that Disney executives are excited about. As Chapek spoke about the new launch model for Mulan, he stressed that Disney’s team is interested to “see what happens” both in terms of subscriber growth and how many people purchase the film.

Reading between the lines, Chapek doesn’t want to piss off theater owners associations, but he’s not trying to ignore the possibilities that Disney+ can do more. It would be obtuse to ignore an obvious, new revenue stream. That’s true while companies face ongoing economic turmoil amid the pandemic, and it’ll still be true after the beginning phase of the pandemic subsides.

Although the pandemic is to blame for the sudden shift in strategy for three of the world’s biggest film companies — Universal, Warner Bros., and Disney — the outcome seemed inevitable. Home entertainment revenue last year saw massive gains, largely driven by different types of streaming options. The pandemic has accelerated trends that likely would have played out in years to come; what may have happened in a decade occurred in mere months. Disney’s announcement felt like the rope finally snapping, and it has led to a series of existential questions. Will movie theaters survive? Will studios prioritize digital releases as conglomerates try to build their streaming bases?