Disney+ subscribers in the UK (and other non-US territories) can look forward to a lot more content via Star from February 2021 — at a cost

From February 23 a new brand of so-called adult friendly content comes to Disney+ as part of its Star range. Many familiar titles will appear (and we note some of them are already available in the UK included in other streaming services) including: 24, Lost, The X-Files, How I Met Your Mother and many more. It also includes detective drama Big Sky we reported on earlier.

Of course more content can mean higher subscription fees (as we noted in our assessment of the recent Disney Investors’ Day). If you take a look at the Disney+ FAQ, you’ll see a rise to £7.99 per month or £79.90 annually. Existing subscribers keep their current fee until August 23 (see here).

We’ve reported on many changes in streaming services recently, and more to come (and the BBC is not immune). It’s always been expected that as services that already own content (and the Disney corporation is a good example) move from leasing content to streaming directly, we’d see shows move around. At some point this will stabilise, and while we know many households have at least two streaming services (and in the UK we have a lot for free via iPlayer, ITV Hub et al), the audience is not infinite, nor are their wallets. We expect some interesting developments over the next few years.