Which was a necessary move after shows like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law strangely had a a $225m budget (seriously, The Fall Guy this weekend had a $130m budget and is flopping. How was a TV show for a streamer ever approved with that type of cost overruns?)


The problem? Cutting the budgets of original shows is a great move for profitability, but a terrible move for growth. Nobody is watching Disney+, with the latest Nielsen numbers having Disney+ around Tubi and Peacock in overall TV watch time. Here’s the latest minutes viewed for Disney+ and Netflix originals for comparison (on TV and TV connected devices for the week ending 4/7/24):

Netflix:



Disney+:




In other words, when you aren’t releasing new shows, nobody watches stuff on your platform*. So sure, cutting all the originals stops rhe bleeding. But it also stops any growth. Disney’s linear TV revenue will continue to decline as cable subs shrink, and the original idea was for Disney+ to plug that gap.

*this is just for originals. Plenty of (most?) sub to Disney+ for the library of content, but I think it’s fair to guess the numbers are fairly proportional. Originals drive new subs and growth and people coming back.