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Disney+ launches on November 12 for $6.99/mo, plus new Marvel, Star Wars series | Ars Technica

The emperor's new app —

Disney+ launches on November 12 for $6.99/mo, plus new Marvel, Star Wars series

Plus, The Simpsons ; may be bundled with Hulu, ESPN Plus "at a discounted price."

The Walt Disney Company finally took the wraps off of its Disney+ streaming services app, slated to launch on November 12 of this year at a $6.99/mo rate or an annual price of $69. The company also confirmed a few new series exclusive to the paid, ad-free subscription service, along with some technical details?and Disney+'s exclusive acquisition of the complete Simpsons archives.

Ahead of the event, rumors pointed to one major Marvel-affiliated series revolving around the hero Hawkeye. Instead, Disney confirmed a series in the Disney+ "Marvel" tab titled Falcon and Winter Soldier while showing off the service's interface. No footage was shown of this series as of press time, but the characters will be portrayed by their MCU actors, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan. Additional series announced by Marvel at the event include What If , an animated series that will "take pivotal moments from the MCU and turn them on their head," and WandaVision , a vaguely teased series starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Wanda Maximoff and The Vision, respectively.

"The post- Endgame vision will be extremely different," Marvel added as a sneaky tease to its upcoming blockbuster (and its assumedly crazy ramifications on the MCU).

A Marvel representative confirmed only four Marvel films coming to Disney+ in the service's launch window, as opposed to a guarantee that the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe catalog will be live in Disney+'s first year. Conversely, every single Star Wars and Pixar theatrical film will roll out on Disney+ within the first year. Thanks to the service's November launch, Captain Marvel fans will have to wait some time before that March film gets its streaming premiere (as it's not slated to premiere on other services before Disney+ rolls out).

These interface teases also confirmed a few surprise Disney+ exclusives, including a National Geographic-branded travel series called The World According to Jeff Goldblum , a live-action recreation of the Disney classic cartoon Lady and the Tramp , and a TV spin-off based on the Toy Story 4 character Forky. On top of that, Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy confirmed plans for a new Star Wars live-action series that will see Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk return to their characters from Rogue One ?(presumably?in prequel fashion, based on how that film ended).

Many of Disney+'s upcoming offerings have already been announced or teased, including a live-action Star Wars series ?titled The Mandalorian , a slate of Disney-affiliated series (based on the likes of Star Wars: Clone Wars and Monsters, Inc .), and four animated Marvel series . Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau attended the event and showed off premiere footage of that new Star Wars series to the crowd, which was obscured in the event's live webcast.

And if all of that content isn't enough, get a load of the Disney Channel content dump coming to Disney+:?5,000 episodes of that station's TV series and 100 of its original movies. However, as of press time, we don't know how far back in Disney's timeline that number goes, which means Disney+'s promise of? DuckTales episodes may simply refer to that series' modern reboot, not the '80s original.

Some interesting news tucked into the event: Disney+ might be one of the few streaming-media apps to be supported by the Nintendo Switch, which famously does not support Netflix (but does support Hulu, which Disney now owns a 60 percent stake of).
Enlarge / Some interesting news tucked into the event: Disney+ might be one of the few streaming-media apps to be supported by the Nintendo Switch, which famously does not support Netflix (but does support Hulu, which Disney now owns a 60 percent stake of).

Disney Chairman Kevin Mayer confirmed 4K and HDR support on the service on all compatible devices, though he did not confirm whether older Disney content will be upscaled or tuned for such high-fidelity perks. Computer users can look forward to announced support for Disney+ use on desktop Web browsers. Additionally, the service's tablet and smartphone versions will include a pretty robust-sounding offline-viewing option: "Disney+ subscribers will be able to download all of our content and access it offline on an unlimited basis for as long as they are subscribers."

"We'll likely bundle [our digital subscription services] at a discounted price," Mayer told the Burbank crowd, referring to the United States trifecta of Disney+, ESPN Plus, and Hulu. No date or price window was announced for this bundle subscription possibility.

Disney confirmed plans for Disney+ launches in "each major region of the world" over the next two years. These launches will vary, in part, based on expiring content contracts with streaming providers in specific territories. Exact timelines for which regions will get first crack at Disney+ at the same time, or after, the United States were not yet confirmed.

A rep from Disney Streaming Services reminded the audience of the technical chops that this team (formerly known as Bamtech) had built while working on existing apps such as PlayStation Vue and HBO Now, which will now technically compete with Disney's portfolio. And as Disney has loudly confirmed over the past year, Netflix will also become a direct Disney+ competitor, as Disney-affiliated content will indeed disappear from that service (and others) when related content contracts expire.

The event concluded with quite the one-more-thing announcement: Disney+ will become "the exclusive streaming-video-on-demand home of The Simpsons " with all 30 seasons of the series available for unlimited streaming on Disney+'s first day. That news came in the form of a brief animated sequence with the family full of visual puns, all clearly enabled by Disney's recent acquisition of 21st Century Fox .

Listing image by 20th Century Fox / Walt Disney Company

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