Last week, Disney announced that as part of plans to launch its streaming service, it would pull most of its popular titles from Netflix and on to its service. The Netflix deal ends in 2019 and will see titles like Toy Story 4 and Frozen leave the service. Disney was not clear on the fate of its Marvel and Star Wars titles, but it looks like there is a chance that those will remain on Netflix. According to Reuters, Netflix and Disney are in “active discussions” regarding the licensing of Lucasfilm and Marvel titles beyond the 2019 agreement.
During the announcement, Disney CEO Bob Iger said that there was still no decision on where the Star Wars and Marvel titles would go. There was even talk of a separate streaming service for those two properties. According to the press release, the Disney streaming service will contain all the live-action and animated content from Disney and Pixar, with no mention of either Lucasfilm or Marvel.
Netflix predicted the birth of several streaming services as long as five years ago when it embarked on its massive content push. In the last year alone Netflix produced more content than several of the studios combined. Netflix has 18 new series in 2017.
Regardless of the outcome of the talks, Netflix is in a strong position with a growing library of its content. The plan is to have as much as 70% of the content produced in-house. Also, the other studios, including Disney get a lot of money from licensing deals with Netflix and are loathe to lose that revenue.