During Disney’s quarterly results, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that in the United States, they will be launching a single app, which will incorporate Hulu content into Disney+.

Each app will still be available individually, and this might be a way around Disney getting ready to bring together Hulu and Disney+, until Disney sorts out its ownership of Hulu from Comcast.

Bob Iger stated that the one-app experience will offer a better service to its subscribers and increase advertising revenue.

“While we will continue to offer Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ as standalone options, this is a logical progression of our [direct-to-consumer] offerings that will provide greater opportunities for advertisers while giving bundle subscribers access to more robust and streamlined content, resulting in greater audience engagement and ultimately leading to a more unified streaming experience,”

This follows other moves being made by studios, like Comcast and Warner Brothers Discovery, who are consolidating their apps.  Disney feels it can spend more money advertising its major movie and show releases by marketing a single app.

The single-app experience will launch in the United States by the end of the year.

Disney’s tech teams have been working on migrating the Hulu legacy system into the Disney+ tech, since early last year, and the teams referred to the project as “Nu-Lu”.

Bob Iger has had conversations with Comcast about buying its stake in Hulu, which Disney can force to happen in 2024.  In the last few months, Bob Iger has come to the conclusion that offering more general entertainment with Disney+ content is what they need to do.

“What we’re doing right now — because we own two-thirds of Hulu, and we have an agreement with Comcast that may result in us owning 100 percent — is we’re really studying the business very, very carefully, all those competitive dynamics with an understanding that we have a good platform in Hulu.

We have very strong original programming, actually highly awarded original programming, some delivered by FX, which is a great not only producer but brand, and we also have a good library, so it’s a solid platform. And it’s also a very attractive platform for advertisers. It’s already proven to be valuable for them and advertising is proven to be valuable for us. But the environment is very, very tricky right now and before we make any big decisions about our level of investment, our commitment to that business, we want to understand where it could go”.

Bob Iger has said that the addition of Star to Disney+ internationally has been very successful and they want to offer more general entertainment alongside Disney, to reduce churn, increase revenue and reduce costs.

More details to follow!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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