Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+, will launch in the UK on 24 March, the entertainment giant has confirmed.
The new platform will be home to original content, films and other series from studios including Disney, Pixar and Marvel as well as the Star Wars universe.
The new service, which launched in the US last year, is seen as the latest challenger to the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.
Disney has confirmed that the new service will cost £5.99 for a monthly subscription, or £59.99 to sign up for a year.
On the same date, the service will also go live in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland.
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Among the programmes available at launch will be The Mandalorian, the critically acclaimed series set in the world of Star Wars.
The platform will be the exclusive streaming location for films released by the Walt Disney Studios from 2020, the company said.
When it was launched in the US in November, the service gained more than 10 million subscribers on its first day, although some customers were offered a year of the service free of charge with some phone and home-internet plans.
Disney did not break down where the subscriptions came from or if they were free or paid monthly or yearly.
Netflix has gathered around 158 million subscribers since launching its streaming platform in 2007.
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Connecting together all the world’s smartphones, laptops, desktops and other gadgetry, the infrastructure of the internet uses a lot of energy, and that in turn gives it a hefty carbon footprint. According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group, the internet is responsible for roughly one billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, or around two per cent of world emissions.
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Disney+'s range of TV shows and films will likely worry rival streaming platforms, according to technology expert and founder of Pocket-lint.com, Stuart Miles, who said it could force some platforms to rethink their subscription models and how they offer users content.
“With such a vast catalogue of Marvel, Disney, and Star Wars films and shows I suspect Disney+ won’t be anything other than a huge success,” he said.
“The worry for rival streaming services though is that without those shows and films they are going to have to up their game and find their niche in terms of the content they offer, and for some that might not be enough.
“We could end up having a market so diversified, that the current ‘all-you-can-eat’ model might have to change to cope with the changing viewing habits.”
