Disney Pulling Some Content Off Streaming In Strategic Rethink

Gogglebox star Scarlett Moffatt was 'glowing' as she gave fans an update on her pregnancy, admitting that meeting her baby is starting to 'feel real.'

EXCLUSIVE: The layoffs impacting thousands of Disney staff in the U.S. have spread to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Executives at Target have decided to pull certain LGBTQ-friendly items from their stores nationwide ahead of Pride Month amid backlash from a very vocal subset of the American population.

The Weeknd opened up about his new drama series “The Idol” as the first two episodes premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Monday.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter One of the most talked-about titles at this year’s Cannes Film Festival isn’t a movie, but a TV show. “The Idol,” a scandalous, sexy and sure-to-be-polarizing series (think “Euphoria” but set in the world of pop music) about the price of fame, premiered two of the first five episodes at the festival and instantly inspired a thousand hot-takes about all that on-screen nudity, bodily fluids and Hollywood sycophants. But before “The Idol” — the brainchild of “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye — even made its way to the Croisette, an explosive report by Rolling Stone detailed on-set turmoil, including allegations of a toxic work environment, last-minute script rewrites and budgets gone wild.

Disney+ is set to remove a number of movies, TV series and specials from the streaming service at the end of the month — you can find the full list of titles below.The decision was first announced on May 10 during a Disney earnings call, and now all of the impacted titles have been revealed.

Refresh for updates…Sean Penn, asked about the current state of big wig studio chiefs and the plight of writers and directors, said today at the Black Flies presser, “The industry has been uspending the writers and directors for a long time. I fully support the situation with writers guild, of course.”

first reported, comes just a week after the entertainment giant announced during its quarterly earnings call its plans to remove “certain content” from its streaming platforms in a cost-cutting move.“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,” Disney Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy said during the call.McCarthy also unveiled Disney’s plans to “produce lower volumes of content,” marking a strategic shift from the company’s original goal to flood “the so-called digital shelves” when Disney+ launched three and a half years ago. While Bob Iger explained this plan’s intent to push along subscriber growth, the Disney boss noted during the earnings call that the company “realized that we made a lot of content that is not necessarily driving sub growth.”The former strategic plan also left marketing spending to be “spread so thin,” according to the Disney head, who noted that the company would be more “surgical” in content decisions rather than “spending a lot of money marketing things that are not going to have an impact on the bottom line.” Instead, Iger noted that freeing up these budgetary constraints would enable Disney to focus on tentpole projects that are “great” subscription drivers, including “Avatar,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.

Disney seems to be following a similar strategy as HBO Max and other streaming services that have removed content to take a write off.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney’s culling its content on Disney+ and Hulu is coming as early as next week — with the media company pulling off more than two dozen titles, including series “Willow,” “The Mysterious Benedict Society” and “Dollface,” and movies such as “The One and Only Ivan.” A Disney rep confirmed that 27 titles will be pulled off Disney+ and Hulu. On the company’s earnings call last week, CFO Christine McCarthy said Disney expects to take a write-down in the June quarter of $1.5 billion-$1.8 billion from removing content from its streaming platforms. “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,” McCarthy told investors. “As a result, we will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms.”

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, Just Beyond, 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.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The Walt Disney Co. has scrapped plans to build a $1 billion office complex in Orlando, as the company continues to wage a political and legal battle with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In an email to employees on Thursday, Disney executive Josh D’Amaro said that “considerable changes,” including “new leadership” and “changing business conditions,” had led to the decision to cancel the project. Disney had planned to move 2,000 employees to the Lake Nona complex once it was complete, mostly from the Imagineering division. The company announced the project in 2021, and reports indicated it could have benefited from as much as $500 million in state tax incentives.

Walt Disney CFO Christine McCarthy nudged investors to discard a few narratives that emerged from the latest earnings: that Disney parks growth may be unsustainable and that the company is shedding subscribers and slashing streaming content.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney has pegged total cash content spending at around $30 billion for this year — but the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike may drive that down, CFO Christine McCarthy said. “If you haven’t noticed we’re in the middle of a writers strike,” McCarthy said, speaking Wednesday at MoffettNathanson’s Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in New York. The WGA walkout may reduce Disney’s cash spending on content for the balance of the year, she said. At the MoffettNathanson conference, MCarthy appeared alongside Disney president of ad sales Rita Ferro. The two Disney execs spoke a day after the media conglom’s upfront presentation in the Big Apple to ad buyers and brands — which was noticeably light on scripted fare, given the writers strike. Marvel’s Kevin Feige previewed upcoming Disney+ series “Secret Invasion,” featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle, and announced premiere dates for “Loki” Season 2 and “Hawkeye” spinoff “Echo.”

Naman Ramachandran Disney’s “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3” stayed atop the U.K. and Ireland box office for a second consecutive weekend with £5.4 million ($6.6 million) for a total of £23.9 million, per figures from Comscore. In second place, in its sixth weekend, Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” collected £858,444 for a total of £51 million. There were two debuts in the top five. Sony’s “Love Again” bowed in third place with £340,785 and Universal’s “Book Club: The Next Chapter” in fourth with £299,370. Rounding off the top five was Studiocanal’s “Evil Dead Rise,” which earned £258,417 in its fourth weekend for a total of £5 million.

J. Kim Murphy Bob Chapek, the former Disney CEO who was abruptly ousted from the company last November, is among a group of executives facing a lawsuit claiming violations of securities law for allegedly providing misleading statements and omissions about Disney+ and its subscriber growth. The case, filed by Local 272 Labor Management Pension Fund on May 12 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, also names former Disney executive Kareem Daniel and current CFO Christine McCarthy, as well as the Walt Disney Co. itself, as defendants. The document states that the case seeks a lead plaintiff and judicial determination for a class action suit representing Disney shareholders from Dec. 10, 2020 to Nov. 8, 2022.

In a rare weekend with fewer new studio wide releases, IFC Films had a one-two punch at the box office with Matt Johnson’s film BlackBerry grossing $473k nationwide in 450 theaters, for a U.S. per theater average of $1.05k and cracking the top ten on Friday. It will gross an estimated $740k in North America this weekend, with Elevation Pictures handling Canada.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Disney is going on a diet — but Hulu is still on the menu. Disney CEO Bob Iger and chief financial officer Christine McCarthy delivered a clear message on Wednesday to Wall Street and to Hollywood during Disney’s quarterly earnings call. Disney will cut the overall volume of content produced for its streaming platforms — primarily Disney+ and Hulu — as it deals with a much tighter macroeconomic environment, not to mention the uncertain impact of the writers strike that began May 2. After spending just under $30 billion on content in Disney’s 2022 fiscal year (which ends in September), Iger has targeted $3 billion in savings for 2023. Of that $30 billion, about 30% is devoted to sports rights for ESPN and ABC Sports.

Disney chief executive Bob Iger weighed in on AI today, staying general but calling the battleground technology good for Disney’s business, but disruptive.