When it comes to the future of Disney at a corporate level, two things come to mind: their forthcoming streaming service that will compete with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and their upcoming acquisition of 21st Century Fox to start said streaming service with a lot of content. Ben Sherwood, co-chairman of Disney-ABC’s television division, addressed both of these things at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.
According to Variety’s Tom Spangler, Sherwood said that there’s not a lot he can talk about with regards to the logistics of Disney’s acquisition of Fox’s assets — itself the single-biggest deal that has occurred under Disney CEO Bob Iger’s supervision. Iger has a clear plan in motion for expanding Disney’s media empire, but they’re not discussing the details at this event:
Disney-ABC TV chief Ben Sherwood: Bob Iger has laid out the strategic vision for Disney + Fox deal – "we'll leave it at that" #VarietyCES
— Todd Spangler (@xpangler) January 10, 2018
Since the deal was just announced and there’s still a number of legal questions that are going to have to be asked before it’s finalized, it’s only logical to assume that we’ll have to wait a bit before we know the specifics. That being said, Sherwood was significantly more talkative about Disney’s currently-unnamed streaming platform. According to Sherwood, thousands of episodes from Disney’s various shows will be available at launch, alongside several original movies and shows (and that’s not even getting into the movies they’ve produced, or what Fox will bring to the table):
Disney-ABC TV group will be largest contributor to Disney's 2019 OTT subscription service: 7000-8000 episodes from its library, plus 3-4 original series, 3-4 original movies, Ben Sherwood says at #VarietyCES
— Todd Spangler (@xpangler) January 10, 2018
Ben Sherwood assured the audience that among the streaming-exclusive content will be some kind of follow-up to the High School Musical series with the original producers involved. Before this event, it was confirmed that a Star Wars show designed for the platform was also in early development, a television series based on Monsters, Inc., and a new Marvel show, along with several original movies. The platform is expected to be less expensive than Netflix in order to attract a number of customers to the service.
