Last week, Disney removed a little over 100 of its original programming from its streaming services such as Disney+ and Hulu around the world. That cut media, which includes the likes of Willow and Marvel’s Runaways, were axed after Disney gave a heads up about a week in advance and for seemingly for no real reason at all. Well, that’s not true—it all came down to money.
According to an SEC filing from late Friday, Disney’s set to write off about $1.5 billion following this streaming purge. It was previously known this was a way for Disney to cut costs, and the filing notes that this will be reflected in the company’s fiscal third quarter. But if you thought this would be a one-and-done affair, that is not the case. Towards the end of the filing, the SEC wrote that Disney is “continuing its review and currently anticipates additional produced content will be removed.” Those removals equate to an additional estimated $400 million. But as far as when these removals may happen (or what canceled shows may be caught in the crossfire), that isn’t touched on in the filing, and Disney hasn’t yet said. Likewise, it’s not known how much the recent shuttering of the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser experience contributed to this write-off.
Either way, it continues to follow in the footsteps of Warner Bros. Discovery, which has removed a variety of shows and movies from its streaming service formerly known as HBO Max. While some of those shows have found a home elsewhere on streaming places like Netflix or Prime Video, others haven’t been so lucky. It may be that those unlucky shows just remain in limbo forever, to the point that even their creators don’t have hard copies they can watch in their own time.
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