Last week we revealed that preview pages had gone live in a handful of European countries touting the impending arrival of Disney+. Unfortunately, “coming soon” is no longer accurate.
During the Disney 3rd Quarter of Fiscal 2021 Earnings Call yesterday, CEO Bob Chapek announced that the launch in Eastern Europe once scheduled for this year has now been pushed all the way until next summer 2022. Wow. We are so sorry for everyone who continues to be left waiting and particularly for those who will still be waiting even after next summer as this delay will undoubtedly bring additional delays as the dominos fall.
Unless some Hotstar launches occur there will be no new launches in the entire first half of next year which is almost equal to this year where Singapore was the sole new Disney+ launch between January and June.
As we’ve mentioned in the past, this year has not been a good year for Disney’s international rollout plans. We speculated they were falling behind on their global rollout on June 27th and hate that we were correct.
With this news Disney is only scheduled to launch the primary service in 4 countries over the entire 2021. Those countries are Singapore in February and Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea in November. Disney also launched Disney+ Hotstar in Thailand and Malaysia this year and is still expected to launch it in the Philippines, but the continued lack of official word has left many frustrated subscribers in the Philippines feeling even more left out.
After a great Year One rollout, even in spite of the pandemic, it’s been rough watching Year Two’s be this troubled.
Someone will undoubtedly yell at us and explain that Disney also launched the STAR brand tile in February in many countries and they announced yesterday they will also be adding Star to Japan in October. Plus, they are launching Star+ in Latin America on August 31st. We give them credit for that! It’s just hard to know so many loyal Disney subscribers in Europe, Africa, and Asia continue to be quite far from joining the service.
Are you disappointed in this news? Were you hoping to celebrate Christmas with Disney+ this year?
Drew Ryan is a film, TV, and Disney geek. He has degrees in English, Student Personnel Administration, and Library & Information Science from Lawrence University, Concordia University-Wisconsin, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Interested in the minutia and licensing of streaming service content, he is always publishing lists, suggestions, and advocating for Disney’s missing library to be added to Disney+. Drew subscribes to Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, and Paramount+. You can find him waxing nostalgic over classic Disney Channel or geeking out over Marvel, CW shows, & Disney on Twitter.
