Disney+: all the news and updates on Walt Disney’s streaming service

A fairly recent episode of The Simpsons that contains a reference to China’s use of forced labor camps has vanished from the Disney Plus streaming service in Hong Kong. First spotted by the Financial Times and later confirmed by Axios, the episode titled “One Angry Lisa” is not available to stream on Disney Plus, even though the rest of The Simpsons’ 34th season is. The episode contains a line critical of the country — “Behold the wonders of China: Bitcoin mines, forced labor camps where children make smartphones.”

Though it is a punchline in The Simpsons, China has been repeatedly criticized by external governments and human rights organizations for allegedly detaining millions of its native Uyghur population and other Muslim minorities in so-called “reeducation centers” in the northwestern Xinjiang region. Those imprisoned in these camps are reportedly subjected to torture such as waterboarding and sexual abuse as part of the Chinese government’s indoctrination programs and are exploited for cheap labor. China has continually denied these allegations.

Disney entered the streaming market this year with the launch of its own streaming service, Disney+, home to Disney series and movies old and new. It’s proven to be a wildly popular competitor to Netflix and Hulu, with over 10 million people signing up on the day it launched.

If you haven’t subscribed to it yet (and the free year of Disney+ for Verizon customers doesn’t apply to you), this Black Friday deal will save you some money. For a limited time, you can get $10 off of a year’s subscription to Disney+. That brings the annual subscription price down to $59.99 from $69.99. The deal is only valid in the United States and Puerto Rico, and does not include a free trial. After the year runs out, you’ll be charged $69.99 unless you deactivate the subscription.

The new Disney+ service is just $6.99 per month, but an even more appealing deal in the eyes of some people is the $12.99 bundle that combines Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ on one bill.

Unfortunately, the version of Hulu that comes with that bundle is the regular one with ads. But there’s a way around this for people who want to pay more for the ad-free tier of Hulu (or who might already be subscribed to it). Hulu goes over the process here, and it was also reported on by Lifehacker.

Disney+ arrived with seven chapters of the Skywalker saga, but people have started to notice something strange about the first Star Wars film, A New Hope: it has an entirely different edit than the ones fans have seen before.

The change was “made by George made prior to the Disney acquisition,” a Disney representative told The Verge. The new edit, which was first spotted by the Star Wars Visual Comparisons Twitter account, features an entirely new insert of the Rodian bounty hunter Greedo saying something while talking to Han Solo in the Mos Eisley cantina on Tatooine.

All 30 seasons of The Simpsons are available for fans to stream on Disney+ starting today, but there’s one glaring problem: the aspect ratio is off.

Every episode of The Simpsons is currently streaming in a 16:9 ratio, meaning it looks stretched and shots are cropped to fit a widescreen format. There isn’t an option to change the aspect ratio, either. This ultimately means there’s a plethora of gags from the first 20 Simpsons seasons that don’t land because the cropping prevents the joke from being fulfilled.

Do you pay for your own Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or HBO Now accounts? A simple truth of today is that many of us share access to streaming services. Maybe you split the cost with friends or family. Maybe you’ve managed to cling to an ex’s streaming account (and they’ve been nice enough not to change the password). Disney is aware that this is the reality of consumer behavior as it launches Disney+, and the company acknowledges that its new service is in for the same treatment.

With generous usage guidelines (four concurrent streams, up to seven user profiles per account, etc.), Disney+ is inevitably going to be shared by people. The service is meant to be enjoyed by everyone in your household, but there will also likely be people who share their passwords with friends across the country.

Disney+ promises to be popular among viewers, especially children, Star Wars fans, animation enthusiasts, and Marvel lovers. The streaming service went live today, and while the normal cost is $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year (there are several bundled services also available), a subset of Verizon customers can save quite a bit of money by getting a year of Disney+ for free.

All you have to do is go to Verizon’s Disney+ page (you can’t get it through the Disney+ site) and sign up. However, as you can imagine, there are some requirements if you want to take advantage of this offer.

Compared to competitors like Netflix or Apple TV Plus, Disney+ is uniquely situated. It’s not a new space where viewers can watch a wide, varied selection; rather, it’s a play to sell customers what they already know.

Disney’s lineup of originals isn’t as important as the hundreds of movies and thousands of TV show episodes it will launch with on day one. Almost every chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be available to stream. The same goes for the Skywalker saga and the entire Pixar library. Subscribers can binge-watch every High School Musical movie and revisit classic shows like That’s So Raven, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and Hannah Montana.

Star Wars has always been heavily inspired by classic Westerns. But that’s never been quite as overt as it is in The Mandalorian, the first live-action TV series for the franchise and the marquee title for the brand-new Disney+ streaming service. Outside of a few animated TV shows aimed at kids, Star Wars has largely been a brand that has thrived on the big screen — the original films practically invented the modern concept of a summer blockbuster — but can it make the jump to a prestige TV drama?

With just a single episode out, it’s hard to say whether Disney has succeeded, but one thing is clear: The Mandalorian is off to a great start, and it’s perhaps the best proof yet that the Star Wars universe can lead to compelling content that isn’t packaged for kids or reliant on Luke Skywalker showing up.

The launch day crunch is causing some problems for Disney+. After going live in the wee hours of the morning, Disney’s streaming service is showing “unable to connect” errors as customers on the east coast begin signing up for their free trial and exploring the Disney+ catalog.

Not everyone seems to be running into the errors, but reports are spiking across Twitter and other social media this morning. Fittingly, the error message features Ralph and Vanellope of Wreck-It Ralph and Wreck-It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet. Problems range across platforms including mobile devies, Roku, and Xbox One.

Disney+ is here, and the first episode of Lucasfilm’s highly anticipated live-action series, The Mandalorian, is live. Once you’ve finished devouring The Mandalorian’s pilot, you might be wondering when the next episode will arrive, and at what time. That goes for High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, too. The answer is midnight every Friday from here on out.

Disney says they’ll be added to Disney+ on a weekly basis, starting on Friday, November 15th. Those new episodes will also be added at 12:00am ET, so you might have to put in some late nights if you want to watch The Mandalorian immediately. Or you can just watch the new episodes over the weekend, which is probably Disney’s actual logic here.

Disney+ is going live today, and it includes an unexpected perk: the first 4K versions of several Star Wars movies, including the original trilogy. Episodes I: The Phantom Menace through VII: The Force Awakens are all available to watch with Dolby Vision HDR and Atmos support. There’s also a 4K HDR version of Rogue One, though Solo and Episode VIII: The Last Jedi aren’t yet on the new service.

“We have actually been spending a lot of time getting the movies and TV shows as appropriate, upgraded and ready to be viewed in that format,” Disney streaming services head Michael Paull said at a media event attended by The Verge in New York City last week. “We are working very very hard at making as much a selection as possible of our programming [available] in 4K UHD.”

Marvel Studios Kevin Feige kicked off a chorus of complaints last week after declaring that in order to understand everything happening in future Marvel movies, people would have to subscribe to Disney+.

Disney executives Ricky Strauss and Agnes Chu, both directly involved in overseeing Disney+ content, further explained Feige and Marvel’s approach to connecting with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. WandaVision, a series that stars Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch and Paul Bettany as Vision, is the go-to example. Both that series and Loki, the Disney+ Marvel series that focuses on Tom Hiddleston’s popular character, will play into the second Doctor Strange movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Disney won’t publicly share viewership numbers for its original series and movies, despite fellow streaming giants like Netflix being more transparent in the wake of industry-wide criticism.

The content and development teams overseeing Disney+ have spoken about how they’re approaching sharing metrics in internal conversations, according to multiple Disney executives. The company currently doesn’t see a reason to share metrics with the public, although creative talent who partner with Disney on Disney+ titles will receive some form of ratings.

Disney is working to bring the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe collection — 23 titles to date — to its Disney+ streaming service, but Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home are unlikely to be included.

Ricky Strauss, Disney’s head of content and marketing for Disney+, told The Verge at a recent media day in New York there aren’t any plans to bring the two movies over to Disney+. Although both Tom Holland-led Spider-Man movies, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far From Home, were co-produced by Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures, the rights belong to Sony. That makes it infinitely more difficult for Disney to bring the movies over to its own streaming service.

Disney’s foray into an online streaming subscription service, Disney+, is now live. We’ve updated this post with the company’s full launch lineup — including some of the missing Marvel movies and animated series, along with the first three Home Alone movies.

The company initially used a massive Twitter thread — more than 300 tweets in total — to make the announcement. The thread included obvious titles like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Frozen, alongside older titles like Three Men and a Baby, Three Musketeers, Swiss Family Robinson, and Fantasia. Disney also used the thread to name some popular TV series that will be available on day one, including Lizzie McGuire, Recess, and the animated X-Men series from 2002.

Disney has apparently worked out multiple deals to get much of the MCU back at launch.

A new Twitter thread from the official Disney+ account lists a number of new Marvel titles that will be available to stream at launch. It explains why there are now several more Marvel titles available on Disney+ than what the company announced less than one month ago. On October 14th, Disney announced that Iron Man, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, and Captain Marvel would be available on Disney+ in the US at launch.

Disney+ will be available in the UK on March 31st, a little over four months after it launches in the US on November 12th, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced on an earnings call yesterday. Along with the UK, the service is also set to launch in other major European markets — including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain — on the same date.

Disney+ is already available in the Netherlands, where it launched as a free pilot trial back in September. But its wider March 2020 launch will be the first time many viewers in Europe are able to legally watch Disney+ exclusives including The Mandalorian and The Lady and the Tramp live-action remake.

Disney+ will be available on Amazon Fire TV devices for the November 12th launch after all, according to The Wall Street Journal, following a WSJ report last month that said the streaming service may not be available on Amazon products due to a disagreement over advertising.

CEO Bob Iger announced the news on Disney’s fourth quarter earnings call, alongside news that Disney+ will also be available on LG and Samsung smart TVs. “We’re pleased to announce partnerships with Amazon Fire [TV], LG, and Samsung devices.”

Disney’s final earnings call before the launch of its anticipated streaming service, Disney+, reminded investors that Disney is in a strong place, beating revenue estimates.

The company reported a quarterly revenue of $19.1 billion. It was estimated to pull in $19.04 billion. The company posted $2.32 billion in profit during this same quarter last year on $14.3 billion in revenue. Still, Disney’s numbers are almost up across the board, including a huge boost from its studios — specifically The Lion King — and theme park divisions. Disney’s earnings report states the increase in “theatrical distribution results was due to the performance of The Lion King, Toy Story 4 and Aladdin in the current quarter compared to Incredibles 2 and Ant-Man And The Wasp in the prior-year quarter.” In fact, studios revenues for the quarter “increased 52 percent to $3.3 billion,” according to the report.

Avengers: Endgame will land on Disney+ one month earlier than expected, moving from December 11th to November 12th in the United States. The date change makes Endgame a launch title.

During a call with investors in May, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that Endgame would be available on Disney+ on December 11th. Iger noted that Endgame’s placement would come “just a month after we launch the service.” That date was later reiterated by Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige at D23, Disney’s biennial fan convention, in August.

Disney+ and ESPN+ will run an ad promoting the premium TV channel Starz, The Verge has learned.

Disney has agreed to run the ad in exchange for streaming rights to some of its own films, like Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which had previously been licensed out to Starz, according to a person familiar with the arrangement. The ad will appear on the page after a customer has finished signing up for Disney+ and ESPN+, based on photos seen by The Verge. The ad will appear on Disney+’s Android app and in browsers, the person said.