Breaking: Hulu Arrives on Disney+ as Beta Test Goes Wide

If you fire up Disney+ today, you may notice a major difference — Hulu is now available as a tile on the home screen. In the same way Star is available for most other countries, Hulu is the final icon on the top rail of the service. Click it open and you’ll get Hulu content presented in the Disney+ UI.

What Does Hulu Look Like Inside Disney+?

When you open the Hulu tab, you’ll get what appears to be the full Hulu library, though we haven’t confirmed that all titles are available. That includes adult shows and Hulu originals like “The Handmaid’s Tale,” FX’s “American Horror Stories,” and even R-rated movies like “Prey” and “Barbarian.”

Scroll down a bit and you’ll see the familiar Hulu sorting option by network, so you can access hubs for several channels including A&E, CBS, Fox, FX, Lifetime, and Nickelodeon.

It doesn’t appear that your Hulu viewing history, watchlist, or viewing history made the jump to Disney+, however.

We don’t see any options for Hulu Live TV at this time, so that appears to be available exclusively within the Hulu-only interface.

Even if you have ad-free Disney+, the integrated service will know if you have the ad-supported Hulu and will behave accordingly.

Interestingly, if you start watching a Hulu show or movie, that title will appear under the “Continue Watching” section inside the main Disney+ section. Watching a Hulu show on Disney+ does not register back within standalone Hulu, so that remains a kink to be worked out.

If you have Hulu, you won’t see a corresponding Disney+ tile on that service.

Why Is Disney Doing This?

Disney is well on its way to owning Hulu outright, having paid Comcast $8.6 billion for its stake earlier this week. NBCUniversal’s parent company was holding out for the big payday for its one-third ownership of Hulu.

The consolidation was announced less than one month ago, with CEO Bob Iger noting that the integration will move from a beta version to the final version early next year. Today, Disney announced the finished product will be ready in March.

“We expect Hulu on Disney+ will result in increased engagement, greater advertising opportunities, lower churn, and reduced customer acquisition costs, thereby increasing our overall margins,” Iger said. “We will launch a beta version for bundle subscribers in December, giving parents time to set up profiles and parental controls that work best for their families ahead of the official launch in early spring 2024.”

There is a likelihood that Disney+ also adds a tile for ESPN+ in time. It would make sense for Disney+ to offer a unified hub for all its streaming services.

Unanswered Questions

The big question is what kind of future awaits Hulu as a standalone entity. While the recent streaming trend leans toward consolidation, Hulu currently seems different enough that it may call for a continued presence as its own service. The huge advertising spend for Hulu Live TV (especially as a sports destination) would suggest Disney isn’t ready to close that service down anytime soon.

But is Disney willing to put the entire Disney+ library within the Hulu Live TV ecosystem or vice versa? Adding live TV channels to Disney+ could make that service bloated. Conversely, adding Disney+ as a section within Hulu Live TV may somehow diminish that brand. So Disney will have to decide what lives where and exactly how much integration to allow.

There’s also the issue of content budgets moving forward — how will Disney divvy up its spending among all those services. Disney has been giving short shrift to Hulu for years. Is it easier to ignore now that it’s a tiny tab on a larger streaming service?

Does it really make sense to segregate all the Hulu library within that tab over the long haul? For example, Hulu has several family holiday movies that would look right at home on the main Disney+ page. But you could imagine Disney animators setting things on fire if their careful craftsmanship were intermingled with the dead-eyed Robert Zemeckis fever-dream characters from “The Polar Express.”

This is not a perfect integration, but it’s also not final. Disney will have to find a way to streamline the experience for users, defend the Disney brand, and make the experience less confusing. But still, this is a great start.