There will be no content that isn’t suitable for families.
While the new streaming service is still a few months away from launching in certain parts of the world (Ireland should expect along with the rest of “Western Europe” any time between October this year and March of next year), Disney+ is still getting a lot hype this week.
The Mandalorian? Ooooooh.
Weekly episodes instead of all-at-once binge-fests? Aaaaaaah.
First show cancelled before the service goes live? Wait, what?
While we’re used to Netflix pulling the plug on the shows that we love – we’re still not over the loss of Tuca & Bertie – this has to be some kind of record.
Deadline announced that Book Of Enchantment, an adaptation of the series of books based on the most-famous villains in Disney’s back catalog, has been cancelled from their upcoming slate.
And it wasn’t something that was in the far reaches of “we’ll get to that show one day”: Disney+ had been working on the show for a year, locations had been scouted, a writer’s room had already put in 13 weeks of graft into the show’s scripts, and a shooting start date of May 2020 had been announced.
Apparently the reason for the cancellation was down to the show’s direction and tone of the show, which was supposedly a lot darker than what Disney had expected.
But this falls in line with a recent answer given to entertainment writer Eric Vespe, who had asked a representative at Disney+ about the expectations of what would be on the streaming service’s line-up:
I asked about R-rated content, if any of Fox’s more adult fare will make it on to Disney+ and he said that Disney+ will all be PG-13 or softer. I wonder if this will be their weakness that other streaming services can exploit.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) August 24, 2019
With Disney now owning Fox, that essentially means that Deadpool and Logan won’t be appearing on Disney+, while we shouldn’t expect any PG-13 projects (pretty much 12A over here) to go into production for the streaming service, which is probably were the problem lay with Book Of Enchantment.
This also means that all of the other “more adult” titles now owned by Disney – Alien, Predator, Die Hard, etc. – also won’t be showing up on Disney+. While in the States that could mean they’ll appear on their related streaming service Hulu instead (which is being sold as part of a package deal there), we don’t have that option on this side of the Atlantic as Hulu isn’t available over here.
Whether that means we’ll just never get to stream Die Hard or Predator or Deadpool ever again in Ireland and the UK, we’ll have to wait a few more months to find out…
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
