This article is part of our special “Disney Minus” series covering the the virtually non-existent February lineup and our significant concerns about the Disney+ leadership and content team priorities. The month after setting their previous worst record, Disney follows it up with dangerously close to 0 titles.
The list of content coming to Disney+ in February is out and it’s sorely missing… everything. February is more than just an ordinary month, so there were many exciting ways for the content team to program, including Black History Month. February is also known world-wide as the month that features Valentine’s Day.
During this month, a content team lead by one of our staff would have licensed multiple romantic comedies and love stories from Disney’s library to stream on Disney+. One of the many, many, many vacant genres on Disney+ is romantic comedies so we would want to fix that. Through Fox, Disney owns countless PG-13 romcoms. This genre performs extremally well on Netflix. Unfortunately, Disney sees these films as “mature” because they acknowledge sex and passes them over for superhero films.
What Disney+ Is Adding For Valentine’s Day
The only thing arriving in February that they can promote for Valentine’s Day is Drew Barrymore’s excellent Never Been Kissed. One positive is that this is one of the only romcoms on the service and one of very few PG-13 comedies. This is also the record-tying 4th time the title returns to Disney+ from other contracts. Like the previous “returns” record holder, The Sandlot, Disney made the poor decision to add the film too early instead of letting its pre-existing deals wrap up.
Never Been Kissed Trailer
Much like the sole title they’re adding for Black History month, it’s a returning title. Disney couldn’t be bothered to dig through their library and instead is recycling the same films over and over. Adding it in February wasn’t a clever move to celebrate the holiday. It leaves its Starz / Hulu combo contract January 31st and would have returned regardless of the holiday.
What Disney+ Should Have Added
Coincidentally enough, the one title Disney should have added also released in 1999. On February 13, 1999, ABC network aired a Winnie the Pooh Valentine’s Day special entitled Winnie the Pooh: A Valentine for You.
In what can only be seen as a slap in the face, this special is actually scheduled to arrive on Disney+ in Australia tomorrow. Tomorrow is the first “title drop day” since launch that they are completely skipping in America. Could the special be coming to us as well and they just forgot to promote it? Maybe. It’s bizarre that they would skip a day this far into the service, but for the sake of this article we expect the worst. After all, they are scheduled to skip a day in February too. The service’s utilization of its library has gone downhill significantly since 2020, so nothing surprises us anymore.
Since there’s no trailer on YouTube, here’s the beginning of the special:
Are there other Valentine’s Day specials we’re missing? Are you disappointed Disney is not putting effort into adding content for Valentine’s Day? Let us know on Twitter!
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.
