Disney+ September 2023 New Releases

September 6
I Am Groot (Season 2)

September 13
Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory

September 15
Lang Lang Plays Disney (Music Special)
Master & Apprentice: A Special Look at Ahsoka (Featurette)

September 20
Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of Secret Invasion

September 29
Marvel Studios Legends
Disney’s Launchpad (Live Action Shorts)

This Month’s Disney+ Streaming News

Disney+ Follows the HBO Max Trajectory

August 23, 2023 — Did you once subscribe to Disney+ in hopes of loads of great new shows featuring the Star Wars and Marvel universes? When The Mandalorian debuted in 2018, everyone caught the Disney+ streaming bug. Only five years later it has been hemorrhaging customers for almost a year and now it’s about to do the same with content. To top this bad news off, they are raising rates for the second time in less than a year. Didn’t HBO Max pull this stunt and where are they now? If you need some proof, in the recent Q3 Earnings call it was revealed that Disney+ subscribers dropped over 9 million customers.  

There’s also a long list of shows being pulled from the Disney+ streaming service: 

• A Spark Story (Disney+)
• Be Our Chef (Disney+)
• Big Shot (Disney+)
• Black Beauty (Disney+)
• Cheaper by the Dozen remake (Disney+)
• Clouds (Disney+)
• Diary of a Future President (Disney+)
• Disney Fairy Tale Weddings (Disney+)
• Earth to Ned (Disney+)
• Encore! (Disney+)
• Foodtastic (Disney+)
• Howard (Disney+)
• It’s a Dog’s Life with Bill Farmer (Disney+)
• Just Beyond (Disney+)
• Magic Camp (Disney+)
• Marvel’s MPower (Disney+)
• Marvel’s Project Hero (Disney)
• Marvel’s Voices Rising: The Music of Wakanda Forever (Disney+)
• Rosaline (Disney+)
• Stargirl (Disney+)
• Stuntman (Disney+)
• The Making Of Willow (Disney+)
• The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (Disney+)
• The Mysterious Benedict Society (Disney+)
• The One and Only Ivan (Disney+)
• Timmy Failure (Disney+)
• Turner & Hooch [(Disney+)
• Weird but True! (Disney+)
• Wolfgang (Disney+)
• Willow (Disney+) Cancelled after one season.
• The World According to Jeff Goldblum (Disney+)

And finally is the word that Bob Iger is putting out that Disney+ will be cracking down on password sharing.  It’s been reported in recent months that Iger wants to sell Disney+ to Apple. This flies in the face of that claim as no smart business man would devalue their product in hopes of selling it unless they purposely wanted to make it more attractive as a bargain buy. 

Ahsoka Is Why Dave Filoni is Star Wars, Only Hope

Aug 18 — Ahsoka drops on Disney+ this month (August 23rd) and could be the only reason anyone is still subscribing to the failing streaming service. When George Lucas handed over the Clone Wars saga to Dave Filoni, his intention was to find a true steward of his Star Wars Universe. Over the years both Filoni and John Favreau forged a working relationship through various Star Wars franchise projects that culminated in the first live-action Star Wars series that debuted on Disney+ in 2018. It cemented Disney+ as a viable streaming service. Since that time a host of issues have plagued both Filoni and Favreau in terms of interference in their vision of the Star Wars Universe.

Most notable was Kathleen Kennedy’s agenda that lead to John Favreau’s begrudging exit. It’s no secret that fans what to seek Kennedy go. She’s affected both Star Wars and Marvel projects with a cabal of her own hand-selected writers, producers, and directors. Through it all, Filoni has held tight to the niche that he built in the Star Wars Universe.  His own character Ahsoka has grown from a plucky sidekick to Anakin Skywalker to an endearing and important character to be taken very seriously. She’s now come of age. Her story will be integral to the future of Star Wars if it is to survive and the man behind her, Dave Filoni is the only hope that Star Wars can retain its roots with character-driven sci-fi fantasy. So far, we’ve seen The Mandalorian, Boba Fett, and even Obi-Wan fall off a cliff as outside forces have impacted both their existing stories and heritage. The last hope is that Ahsoka will redeem the franchise. In a short time, the public jury will decide. Ahsoka will need more than the force to overcome this dark menace. 

Disney+ Raises Rates Again

Aug 16 — It’s hard to believe that streaming services are willing to raise rates while both publishing bad content and deleting content but with Disney being the biggest offender of content mishandling, how can they justify a second price hike in a year? What was once a palatable $6.99 in 2019 has gone up to 7.99, then 10.99, and now to 13.99 in October of 2023. The latest increase has resulted in social media platforms trending the phrase, ‘Cancel Disney Plus’. But it really doesn’t take a grassroots movement to make the decision to cancel Disney+ streaming. In today’s economy, there’s no room for extra spending. Disney+ simply can’t justify insulting customers by injecting politics into content that divides Americans and insult every customer with a rate increase of 27%. In four years, Disney+ has doubled its price, that’s a 100% increase for everyone who took a chance on their start-up streaming service in 2019.  It will be interesting to see how many customers Disney+ loses after October of 2023.