Friday, 19 May 2023

Deadline: Disney Removes Dozens Of Series From Disney+ & Hulu, Including ‘Big Shot’, ‘Willow’, ‘Y’ & ‘Dollface’

Story from Deadline:

Disney is starting to pull content from streaming, with dozens of series and specials slated to leave Disney+ and Hulu on May 26, Deadline has learned. The titles, which are being removed from Disney’s streaming services globally, include Disney+’s Willow, Big Shot, Turner & Hooch, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, Just Beyond, Diary of a Future President, The Mysterious Benedict Society and The World According to Jeff Goldblum and Hulu’s Y: The Last Man, Dollface, The Hot Zone, Maggie, Pistol and Little Demon. A number of Freeform series also are slated to leave Hulu.

The list features largely short-lived series, specials and direct-to-streaming movies.

The move, which comes with a content impairment charge of $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion, was announced during the recent Disney earnings call on May 10.

“We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation,” CFO Christine McCarthy said. At the time, no details were provided on the content that would be removed.

Disney is the latest media company to purge content from its streaming platforms in a cost-cutting measure as the industry is rethinking costs and strategy in that arena with a renewed focus on profitability. Warner Bros. Discovery removed a slew of series from HBO Max, with AMC and Showtime also undergoing a similar scale back.

For more insight into the issue, read Deadline’s The Streaming Purge: Behind The Wave Of Library Content Removals & Its Impact On The Creative Community, which predicted the current Disney program cuts. 

Below is a list of some of the titles that are being removed from Disney+ and Hulu: 8-Howard will not be removed from Disney+. The documentary about famous Little Mermaid lyricist Howard Ashman was on the original list of titles set to be pulled May 26 that Disney had sent out to partners. The list is being reevaluated, and there could be additional changes, a rep for Disney said.

As the list is being finalized, several other Disney+ titles that had been earmarked for removal are staying on, A Spark Story, Marvel’s MPower and Marvel’s Voices Rising: The Music of Wakanda Forever. The roster below has been updated to reflect that.

More titles, including Disney+’s The Right Stuff, have emerged. They have been added to the list.
  1. Big Shot [Disney+]
  2. Turner & Hooch [Disney+]
  3. The Mysterious Benedict Society [Disney+]
  4. The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers [Disney+]
  5. Willow [Disney+]
  6. The Making Of Willow [Disney+]
  7. Diary of a Future President [Disney+]
  8. Just Beyond [Disney+]
  9. The World According to Jeff Goldblum [Disney+]
  10. Marvel’s Project Hero [Disney+]
  11. The Right Stuff [Disney+]
  12. The Real Right Stuff [Disney+]
  13. Cheaper by the Dozen remake [Disney+]
  14. The One and Only Ivan [Disney+]
  15. Stargirl [Disney+]
  16. Hollywood Stargirl [Disney+]
  17. Flora & Ulysses [Disney+]
  18. Artemis Fowl [Disney+]
  19. The Princess [Disney+]
  20. Encore! [Disney+]
  21. Black Beauty [Disney+]
  22. Clouds [Disney+]
  23. America the Beautiful [Disney+]
  24. Better Nate Than Ever [Disney+]
  25. Weird But True! [Disney+]
  26. Timmy Failure [Disney+]
  27. Be Our Chef [Disney+]
  28. Magic Camp [Disney+]
  29. Earth to Ned [Disney+]
  30. Foodtastic [Disney+]
  31. Stuntman [Disney+]
  32. Disney Fairy Tale Weddings [Disney+]
  33. Wolfgang [Disney+]
  34. It’s a Dog’s Life with Bill Farmer [Disney+]
  35. The Big Fib [Disney+]
  36. Rogue Trip [Disney+]
  37. More Than Robots [Disney+]
  38. Shop Class [Disney+]
  39. Pick the Litter [Disney+]
  40. Own the Room [Disney+]
  41. Among the Stars [Disney+]
  42. Family Reboot [Disney+]
  43. Gina Yei [Disney+]
  44. Club Mickey Mouse (Malaysia) [Disney+]
  45. Harmonious Live! [Disney+]
  46. Pentatonix: Around the World for the Holidays [Disney+]
  47. Y: The Last Man [FX/Hulu]
  48. Pistol [FX/Hulu]
  49. Little Demon [FX/Hulu]
  50. Maggie [Hulu]
  51. Dollface [Hulu]
  52. The Hot Zone [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  53. The Premise [Hulu]
  54. Love in the Time of Corona [Hulu]
  55. Everything’s Trash [Hulu]
  56. Best in Snow [Hulu]
  57. Best in Dough [Hulu]
  58. Darby and the Dead [Hulu]
  59. The Quest [Hulu]
  60. Rosaline [Hulu]
  61. Chefs vs. Wild [Hulu]
  62. Fearless: The Inside Story of the AFLW [Hulu]
  63. Life Below Zero: Next Generation [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  64. National Geographic Investigates: LSD and Psychedelics [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  65. 9/11: One Day in America [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  66. The Armstrong Tapes [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  67. Buried Secrets of WWII [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  68. Bin Laden’s Hard Drive [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  69. Croc That Ate Jaws [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  70. Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  71. Drug Lords: The Next Generation [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  72. Extreme Rescues [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  73. Most Wanted Sharks [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  74. Locked Up Abroad [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  75. North Korea: Inside the Mind of a Dictator [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  76. To Catch A Smuggler Rome [Nat Geo/Hulu]
  77. Ultimate Survival WWII [Nat Geo/Hulu]

Additionally, leaving Hulu May 31 are the following Freeform series:

  • The Come Up
  • The Deep End
  • Everything’s Trash
  • Keep This Between Us

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