Tracking Every Stealth Addition On Disney+ USA - Drew Ryan

Last Updated: May 5, 2023

A terrible new trend emerged in 2022. For about 1 year now, Disney+ has systematically refused to acknowledge the return of films that have been gone for 1.5 years or more. Their strategy apparently is to make subscribers think Disney+ is not a good value and does not add films. It’s not hard to feel that way with inadequate effort like this:

Disney+ April 2023 – Class action lawsuit level negligence.

When they “did their job,” this was the norm:

Disney+ 2021 – Back when they provided catalog and respected their history.

After almost entirely ceasing film additions in 2022, you’d think they’d want to actually let people know when films that they unprofessionally stealth removed have returned. This is just how it goes now. Films leave quietly, then return 15 or more months later without even the respect of a place in the “New to Disney+” row, let alone acknowledgement in the monthly press releases.

All The Titles Disney+ Won’t Promote

Stealth Returns:

Dr. Dolittle (1998) – June 2022
The Big Year (2011) – August 2022
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) – September 2022
Ramona & Beezus (2010) – September 2022
Home Alone 4 (2002) – November 2022
Miracle on 34th Miracle Street (1947) – November 2022
Gulliver’s Travels (2010) – November 2022
Avatar (2009) – November 2022
Millions (2004) – November 2022
The Wolverine (2013) – December 2022
Big (1998) – December 2022
Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog (1995) – December 2022
Dr. Dolittle 3 (2006) – December 2022
Bend it Like Beckham (2002) – January 2023
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013) – January 2023
The BFG (2016) – January 2023
Aquamarine (2006) – February 2023
Rio (2011) – March 2023
Ever After (1998) – March 2023
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) – March 2023
We Bought A Zoo (2011) – March 2023
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) – May 2023

Stealth Arrivals:

Dr. Pol Season 19 Episodes 6-10 – November 2021
Chicken Squad Season 1 Episodes 12-15 – November 2021
Bridge to Terabithia (2007) – October 2022
Just Love and a Thousand Songs (2022) – December 2022
PJ Masks: Power Heroes (2023) – April 2023 (Partial stealth, did not appear in the New row)

What DOES Disney+ Add?

Intelligent consumers have caught on that only recent theatrical films 4-5 months post-premiere (yes, Avatar 2 and Ant-Man 3 show us the 45-60 day window is over…) and returning Fox movies are all that’s left. The the remaining film catalog missing has been locked in a vault forever. Rewatching the past few years’ videos for this article was painful as the same Fox films were promoted over and over and over due to their refusal to utilize the Fox and Touchstone library in USA to the extent they have internationally.

In the past 2 years, they’ve ceased adding ANY films that weren’t present in 2019-2021, instead cycling the same very tiny pool of Fox films on and off over and over. Oh yes, did we mention, there are over 750 Fox, Nat Geo, Hollywood, Searchlight, and Touchstone films streaming on Disney+ outside USA that have NEVER streamed in USA and MANY are not Rated R?

Yes, our pool is tiny by choice. They will not put the work in to provide a larger catalog of films and instead license them out heavily to Roku, YouTube Movies, Starz (the biggest offender), HBO (2nd biggest offender), Prime Video (3rd biggest offender), MGM+, Paramount+, and Peacock.

This habit is incredibly foolish because every other streaming service acknowledges film additions and lists new additions in their press releases. Their team is also reckless, because they refuse to use the Coming Soon row to promote upcoming anything besides originals.

In the extremely rare situations where they provide a Coming Soon page for returning films, they are incapable of listing in the Coming Soon row. Last year when Old Dogs returned in August, the Coming Soon page with return date had been listed in the search results for a year without ever getting added to the actual Coming Soon row. Another example of their unprofessional work is that numerous attempts to contact their communications team and inform them of this issue did not result in the page being linked to the Coming Soon row. History repeats itself.

I contacted them multiple times about the “detached” Coming Soon page for Aquamarine that had been in the search results for a few months as well as Rio. Not surprisingly, their team would rather allow the Coming Soon row to grow empty and negatively reflect on the service’s value rather than add the Coming Soon pages they’ve already listed in search.

Why should people subscribe to Disney+ when it does not add anything? It certainly seems that way based on their limited press release lists and refusal to list content in the Coming Soon row. You’d think by now they’d have taken a less from Netflix, but despite our similar obnoxious e-mails to their communications team about Netflix’s ability to list 100s of page a month, they either ignore our messages or are unwilling to make the changes necessary to compete with Netflix’s feature.