Please wait...
Please wait...

Disney+ reveals European launch date

The Walt Disney Company’s much-vaunted Disney+ streaming service will launch in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and elsewhere in Western Europe on March 31 next year.

Bob Iger

Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger made the announcement during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday evening.

The service is due to land in the US, Canada and the Netherlands, where it has been getting a pre-launch trial, on November 12.

A roll-out in Australia and New Zealand will follow on November 19 before a full Western Europe bow next March.

It leaves fans in Europe waiting four months longer than their US counterparts to see Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian, which is one of the streamer’s most keenly anticipated originals.

An enormous catalogue of 500 films and 7,500 episodes of various series was unveiled by the streamer on Twitter during Mipcom.

Iger said on Thursday this would grow to 620 films and 10,000 episodes over the service’s first five years.

Also in the earnings call, Iger said that Disney planned to make US streaming service Hulu, which it now fully controls, the official streaming home of FX Networks, which it bought as part of a deal for a package of assets from 21st Century Fox.

FX on Hulu will offer more than 40 FX library series as well as new episodes of its shows immediately after they air on the linear cablenet.

Four new series previously commissioned for the linear network will now be made exclusively for the FX section of Hulu: Devs, Mrs America, A Teacher and The Old Man.

Please wait...