UPDATE July 9 – Night at the Museum is back. Phew!
Disney Minus has struck again. Once again, the Fox library proves to be basically useless in the USA as Disney suffers its greatest one-day loss in exactly a year, losing 4 Fox films just as they did July 1, 2020.
Not just any films either – all of them are franchise films and many seemed very likely to be “Safe.” As always, the titles were removed without warning, because that’s how Disney+ and ONLY Disney+ handles these situations. It’s completely disrespectful to consumers to not even provide expiration notices.
Remember that the service was promoted as “titles never removed” and then they backpedaled on that and claimed “some” for “brief periods to time” ( most leave for 1.5 years which ain’t brief). People have been e-mailing and tweeting and asking them over and over to at the very least stop adding titles that can’t stream long-term or at least longer than 6 month. A logical request from paying subscribers to stop misleading them and adding content that has to leave soon after. No dice.
Breakdown of Titles Removed from Disney Plus
- X-Men is now gone. Shortly after receiving X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and just after announcing X-Men Dark Phoenix (2019) would come as part of Disney’s Summer of Streaming event – the flagship is gone. It streamed about 1 year total. Most countries have all X-Men franchise films cuz their Fox library isn’t a mess.
Night at the Museum is gone. Only 2 months after being added alongside its sequel, the sequel now stands alone. The 3rd one has never been on Disney+ in USA. Most countries have all 3 because their Fox library isn’t a mess.UPDATE July 9 – removal was a mistake. It’s back.- Flicka 2 is gone – less than 2 months after getting added. Flicka (2006) rejoins the service after a 1.5 year absence in only 9 days. The Flicka franchise will now continue to be separated for over a year as Flicka 2 and 3 are both now on Starz. Most countries have all 3 because their Fox library isn’t a mess. Flicka 2 leaves Starz September 17th, 2021.
- This one’s even more of a shocker – despite being a launch title, legendary Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street is gone. This was one of the only vintage Fox films on the entire USA service. It expires from HBO September 30th, 2022. I have to admit I really figured when this came at launch they’d ensured it wouldn’t be going anywhere. I hate that I was wrong.
If i sound mad, believe me. I am. Removing titles is part of streaming services. Contracts are contracts. Nobody is dispuuting or angry about that.
But it’s hard to not forget:
- We were misled about titles not being removed
- We are not being warned when they are getting removed
- Titles are added regularly then removed quickly within a few months which makes no sense because of how much it flies against bullet point #1 (just wait until they are freed up)
- Disney set a tone by buying out 100s of pre-existing contracts for their Disney, Pixar, and Marvel library prior to launch. Disney made a choice to not do the same for the Fox library which is completely useless in America – rotating for at least another 5 years between HBO, Starz, Prime Video, YouTube Movies, and Epix.
For a full list of removed titles and the reasonings – check out our Titles Removed page.
For a full list of expiration dates for titles on Starz, HBO, etc – check out our Expiration Dates page.
Thanks to StitchKingdom on Twitter for the info.
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.
