The streaming wars continue to heat up as various services compete for subscribers, but it’ll be a long time yet before any platform will be able to rely exclusively on in-house content. As a result, the legal minefield of distribution rights will only become more tangled over the coming years as the likes of WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Disney Plus slowly but surely regain the rights to their titles that have been leased out to rivals such as Netflix and Amazon.
The former boasts the strongest library of originals, of course, which isn’t surprising when you consider that they’ve been moving away from pre-existing movies and TV shows for a while now, while Disney Plus is weakest on fresh programming but has the benefit of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pixar, Star Wars and virtually the entire animated and live-action back catalogue, not to mention their recent acquisition of Fox moving a whole host of major properties under the Mouse House’s umbrella as well.
The latest movie to be finding a new home there in the near future is Wreck-It Ralph sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet, which will be leaving Netflix on the 11th of December and then presumably pitching up on Disney Plus in short order. While that’s hardly earth-shattering news, it does mean that there will be very few Disney movies to be found among the entire Netflix library by the end of the year.
Of course, there are still a small handful of them hanging around, but the list is only going to get shorter with Marry Poppins Returns also due to depart soon, as Netflix‘s option on the sequel expires in January 2021. Although, based on the amount they’re planning to spend on original content next year, it isn’t like the execs are going to be losing much sleep over it.