Multiple International Originals Removed From Disney+ In The UK & Europe
This week, a large number of original programs have been removed from Disney+ in the United Kingdom and other countries across Europe.
These removals include many international originals from Japan, Latin America, and Korea, in addition to many other films and documentaries from National Geographic and ESPN.
Here’s a list of some of the titles removed from Disney+ in Europe:
- 4EVER
- Al Davis vs. The NFL
- Anita
- Atom’s Last Shot
- Bad Boys
- Beba
- Because We Forget Everything
- Bee Season
- Brazil
- Bruiser
- Delicacies Destiny
- Dragons Of Wonderhatch
- Four Falls of Buffalo
- Freeks
- Full Count
- Guilty by Suspicion
- House of the Owl
- I Hate Christian Laettner
- It’s a Wonderful Binge
- Jordan Rides the Bus
- Likes for Sale
- Lost Man Found
- My Family
- Papas On Request
- Phi Slama Jama
- Pink Lie
- Ringo
- Santa Evita
- Slaying the Badger
- Small & Mighty
- Soul of a Nation Presents: X / o n e r a t e d – The Murder of Malcolm X and 55 Years to Justice
- Sunchaser
- Super Junior: The Last Man Standing
- Susah Sinyal: The Series
- Taiwan Crime Stories
- The Banshees of Inisherin
- The Creator
- The Files of Young Kindaichi
- The Impossible Heir
- The Preacher’s Wife
- This Boy’s Life
- Time Switch
- Tomorrow, I’ll Be Someone’s Girlfriend
- Unfinished Business
- Women in Taipei
- Yakuza Lover
- Year of the Scab
Note: This list may vary between countries, and not everything removed is included, as some removals are still happening.
Many people assume that almost every movie or series added to Disney+ will stay there indefinitely because Disney owns the distribution rights to most of its content.
However, this isn’t the case, and in the past few years, we’ve seen a number of culls of content on Disney+ for various reasons, such as licensing and saving money.
We’ve seen Disney remove over a hundred original films and shows in the past few years, such as “Willow,” “Stargirl,” and “Big Shot,” since this was part of an impairment charge to basically write off $2 billion from the company’s streaming division as failed assets.
However, since these international originals are still available on Disney+ in many other countries, this indicates that they’ve not been taken off as an impairment charge.
This isn’t the first time that a large number of shows and films have been removed from Disney+ across the UK and Europe; it’s happened on several occasions in the past.
For movies and shows made by a third-party studio, titles are often licensed for a limited time, and once that has expired, they are removed. Disney often licenses many European-made shows and films to help keep the streaming service in line with a quota system that requires a certain amount of content to be available to subscribers from Europe.
Disney has previously told me that they sometimes remove titles from Disney+ due to “business needs”, which is pretty vague to allow them scope to do as they please to save money.
It should also be noted that, unlike other streaming services, Disney+ doesn’t give subscribers a warning that a show will be removed in advance. Many subscribers have contacted me who are upset that a show they were watching has suddenly vanished.
Roger’s Take: I suspect that Disney has done a little spring cleaning of its content, removing those titles that are being watched the least. This helps keep the streaming service in line with those quotas since it’s much cheaper to remove unpopular titles than create more European-made content.
I also could potentially see some of the ESPN titles return in the future, should an ESPN hub be added to Disney+ across Europe, similar to how it works in Latin America. But generally, these titles have been removed from Disney+ because they’re likely to be some of the least viewed shows and films on Disney+ because if they were popular, Disney would be less likely to be removed, as that helps raise money on advertising and subscriber retention.
What do you think of these removals? Let me know on social media!
Roger Palmer
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