Disney Reveals Plans To Dump Dozens Of Shows From Streaming

There was a lot of reckless spending at Disney during the Chapek Era, mostly to prop up the Disney+ streaming service with a large flow of original content. But now the bubble has burst, the bills are coming in and Iger has returned to mop up the mess. And unfortunately, one of the decisions he’s made is to pull a Zaslav on much of the library both Disney+ and Hulu built up these past three years.

Iger said during an earnings call yesterday that Disney basically made too many shows, and so they’re rewriting history so that they appear to have made less of them. “We realized that we made a lot of content that is not necessarily driving sub growth, and we’re getting much more surgical about what it is we make. So as we look to reduce content spend, we’re looking to reduce it in a way that should not have any impact at all on subs.” Well, unless they make people angry enough to cancel their subscriptions over programs being taken away. I don’t think it’s gonna work out, Bob.

Iger confirmed that “we will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion.” Impairment charge means writeoff. On the chopping block are a lot of good things that will become the domain of piracy from now on, including the Willow show I loved and hoped to rewatch when my viewing schedule permitted it. Two months ago showrunner Jon Kasdan claimed the series wasn’t “really” cancelled despite all the crew being laid off. IT LOOKS PRETTY DEAD TO ME, JON.

Here’s the list of shows that Disney plans to remove. You have one week; the culling is expected May 26.

UPDATE: Disney has backtracked on the erasure of Howard, a documentary on the life of composer Howard Ashman (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin), after massive backlash from the LGBTQ community. They now say the doc will remain accessible. Willow is facing similar heat due to its use of queer characters, but there’s no word on a reversal there.