If by some miracle you’ve managed to avoid any discussion about the streaming wars, know this: After months of anticipation, they officially broke out on November 1 when Tim Cook & Co. launched the Apple TV+ service with a small, strange slate of original programming. Things escalated last week with the unveiling of details around AT&T WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, which arrives in May and will host a sizable back catalog of Warner Bros. movies and TV in addition to tons of new shows.
But the biggest buzz has been around the Disney/Fox conglomerate’s gladiator in this death match: Disney+, which enters the arena on November 12 and reportedly already has more than a million subscribers in the US. What will those subscribers get when the service debuts? Virtually every movie Disney’s ever released except Song of the South (great news for fans cinematic masterworks as That Darn Cat! and The Black Cauldron); 15 years’ worth of National Geographic documentaries; almost all of the Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar stuff; and a batch of new content that will only metastasize in the coming months.