‘Mulan’ Moves to Disney Plus Premium VOD, Good or Bad Idea?

Disney is bringing “Mulan” remake to its streaming platform Disney+. The $200 million budget film will be available in a new experimental premium VOD service on Disney+ for $29.99 on September 4. The film will also be released theatrically on the same day in countries where access to the movie on Disney Plus is not available.

 

Disney CEO Bob Chapek said that the “Mulan” release on Disney Plus is a one-time event. “We’re looking at ‘Mulan’ as a one-off, as opposed to saying there’s some new business windowing model that we’re looking at,” he said.

 

This is not the first film that Disney has moved to its Streaming platform. Earlier this year Artemis Fowl premiered exclusively on Disney plus for its subscribers. However, for watching “Mulan”, the existing subscribers have to pay extra $29.99 to rent it and this is what making the fans not so happy.

 

We reported last month during Comic-con that Disney is planning to bring a new VOD model in absence of theaters and “The New Mutants” is likely to be the first film to follow that model, however, Disney has surprised us by Making “Mulan” arrive on VOD.

‘The New Mutants’ Likely to Head Towards VOD Along With Limited Theatrical Release

 

In the current pandemic scenario, this can be considered as a calculated risk and as some financial experts are predicting that even if 50% of Disney plus subscribers rent the film, it can easily earn more than $500 million but that's very unlikely to happen as not everyone has that kind of interest in “Mulan” as compared to MCU films and also 30$ is too much for a small TV or computer screen.

 

Disney Plus has currently 60 million subscribers and considering that 20% of them are willing to go for it, the film can easily recover its budget.

 

Most of the movie exhibitors are not happy with the decision as they are getting anything out of this and they fear if this kind of model succeeds, what will stop the film studios to continue with this as the studios are making direct money here.

 

We also went over social media to see the fans' reaction to this decision and most of them were not very excited as they wanted to see it on a big screen and also the price Disney has set is double an IMAX ticket which doesn't fall into their range.

As per our sources, we have confirmed that the film will be available for 48 hrs once you start watching after renting it. Also, it will be made available to all the Disney+ subscribers by this Christmas. Some websites reported that subscribers can keep the film as long as they have the subscription which doesn't make any sense as they are renting it not buying it.

Time will tell how good this strategy would be for Disney and how supportive be the fans.