Disney to Launch Star in Europe, Canada, Australia, & NZ in February, Star Plus in Latin America in June
It’s official, Disney will be expanding their global footprint with Star as their international streaming service. The company announced that they will be launching Star and Star+ as their general entertainment brand outside the U.S. The brands will be offered in two different ways depending on the market, the company stated.
In Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and other markets, Star will be fully integrated into Disney+, accessible as the sixth brand tile in the app. The service will offer shows from the company’s other brands including FX and movies from 20th Century. Disney also announced they will be raising the streamer’s prices by €2 to to €8.99 to reflect the new changes.
Since it will include more mature content, Disney will require customers to enable the ability to access mature content.
The company will premiere Star+ in Latin America. The service will house Disney-owned entertainment from across its brands and will also carry ESPN Plus and ESPN content.
Star+ will launch in June 2021 as a stand-alone service for ~$7.50 per month (or the local equivalent), or as part of a bundle with Disney+ for ~$9.00 per month.
In August, Disney announced they will launch a new international streaming service under their Star brand. The service will offer library content from the company’s wide-ranging brands such as ABC Studios, FOX Television, FX, Freeform, 20th Century Studios and Searchlight.
The news came as Hulu, which offers more mature programming than Disney+, has yet to expand internationally, and now it looks like those plans are on hold for good.
“In terms of the general entertainment offering internationally, we want to mirror our successful Disney+ strategy by using our Disney+ technical platform, bringing in content we already own and distributing it under a successful international brand that we also already own, which is, of course, Star,” CEO Bob Chapek explained during the company’s Q3 2020 earnings call.
“Hulu aggregates third party content, where this will not. This will be rooted in our own content … and Hulu has no brand recognition outside of the U.S. nor does Hulu have any content that has been licensed to it internationally. This gives us the ability to market under the Disney umbrella and have synergies with our existing platform.”