Disney’s streaming service, called Disney+, is scheduled to launch later this year. On Thursday, Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger revealed that the new service will eventually house the entire Disney Studios Library effectively ending the company’s long standing ‘Vault’ Program.
Iger told shareholders that Disney+ “at some point fairly soon after launch” will carry films that “traditionally have been kept in a ‘vault’ and brought out basically every few years.”
Disney’s catalog of films dates back to the 1920s, and includes iconic films such as “Snow White” and “Bambi” alongside modern classics like “Frozen” and “Wreck-it Ralph”. Traditionally however, Disney has only made individual titles available on home video for limited periods of time.
The “Disney Vault” has been a marketing and sales strategy for years. After a film’s initial release run, Disney would return the film to the vault for a long period of time. That meant that customers who didn’t buy a physical copy of the movie immediately would be out of luck until Disney brought it out of the vault as a new edition or a special release run.
In addition to archived titles, Disney has announced a number of big projects in development exclusively for its streaming service. Those include a “Star Wars” series called “The Mandalorian“, which is set during the rise of the Resistance; an untitled Marvel series revolving around Loki that will involve Tom Hiddleston; another “Star Wars” series called “Cassian Andor” that follows the titular hero in “Rogue One” played by Diego Luna; and yet more projects that span everything from “High School Musical” to a series based on Pixar’s Monsters, Inc.
A content hub of its very own also means that Disney will be pulling all of its titles from other streaming services, with “Captain Marvel” being the first MCU movie to stream exclusively on Disney+.