Disney executives haven’t given a ton of insight into their strategies, but they have offered some signals that streaming is going to be more of a primary focus. They recently shifted around some resources to better accelerate that growth, and this letter pairs along with that very well. That being said, it’s still not exactly clear what the right long-term answer is. We don't know exactly how well Mulan did as a $30 supplemental Disney+ offering, but it seems like a solid number of subscribers did pay for it. Would those same subscribers continue ordering more new release movies or was that a one-off thing? We don't know. It's also unclear whether Disney would value those extremely invested subscribers more than attracting less invested potential subscribers who might join if those offerings were included for free. It's not like Netflix is charging users more for certain content. That being said, Disney took in $13B at the worldwide box office in 2019. That's too much money to just walk away from completely. So, it seems like at least in the near future, Disney is going to want, at minimum, some kind of hybrid model in which they can compete with Netflix but also generate billions in box office returns.
