By: Dominic Jones
While all eyes have been on Star Wars Celebration for big announcements about the future of the galaxy far, far away, Disney (somewhat) quietly had some announcements about how the saga will be represented on Disney+, the upcoming streaming service launching on November 12th. At a Disney+ event on April 11th, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy took the stage to reveal what Star Wars films and TV series will be available on the service at launch.
Kennedy first reaffirmed that the first season of The Mandalorian, the live action series from Iron Man director Jon Favreau, will be available at launch. She also revealed that entire original and prequel trilogies, as well as The Force Awakens and Rogue One will be on the service. The Last Jedi and Solo will also be added the service at some point shortly after launch, while The Rise of Skywalker will be released on the service around the same time it's released on home media.
While it seems like a no-brainer to have the classic Star Wars films available at launch, this was the subject of some consternation for Disney. The company sold the cable rights to the films to Turner in 2016, before Disney+ was ever conceived. They then appeared to have sellers remorse and sought to buy the rights back in 2018, though Turner was initially less than receptive to those offers. Apparently, the two companies came to a deal which will allow the first eight live action Star Wars films to be available at launch, with the others following shortly thereafter.
Not available at launch, sadly, will be the upcoming seventh season of the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It will be the second major, original Star Wars project added to the service, likely coming sometime in 2020 (with the third major addition, the Cassian Andor prequel, coming in 2021). It also appears that the first six seasons of The Clone Wars will be available on the service at launch (alongside Star Wars Rebels), thanks to a screenshot Disney released of the Star Wars section of Disney+ (see header image). Given that The Clone Wars recently left Netflix (its home since 2014) it makes a lot of sense to move it over to the new service. No word about the ongoing animated series Star Wars Resistance, though it would be hard to imagine it not eventually winding up on Disney+
A graph from the event, appears to indicate that the service will launch across North America in the first quarter (Q1) of Disney's financial year (FY) 2020 (November 12th, 2019), and will roll out across Western Europe across Q1 and Q2 of FY2020 (so late 2019 or early 2020 in real years). Meanwhile it will roll out in the Asia-Pacific region across all quarters of FY2020 and 2021, in Latin America in Q1 of FY2021, and in Easter Europe across all quarters of FY2021. You can see the graph below,
Disney+ is set to launch (in the US, at least) on November 12th, at will cost $6.99 a month (or $69.99 a year).
Source: Deadline
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