Disney+ Reportedly to Stop Producing K-dramas After Two Years of Investment Not Yielding Meaningful Returns
I feel like this is a chicken or the egg situation, but the decision is probably a good one. Streaming platform Disney+ has been producing its own K-dramas for two years and also licensing other terrestrial channel K-dramas for streaming in hopes of capitalizing on the expansion. Unfortunately it’s not yielded meaningful returns, i.e. increased subscribers and also retaining subscribers, so the company is reportedly going to stop financing K-dramas going forward. It may still license ones for streaming but the ones it’s produced such as Connect, Casino (Big Bet), and Grid and not garnered the widespread buzz that would help bring new viewers to the platform. Up next for Disney+ is the sci-fi K-drama Moving about a bunch of high school kids with supernatural abilities and the parents that try to protect them.
It’s their own fault, disney plus makes it so hard to watch these kdramas in North America. Even with a subscription, I don’t have access to most of these things.
Exactly!
THIS exactly! If they had made them easily accessible to the US market it would have been more successful. Dumb.
Yet Netflix are spending $2.5 billion on Korean content over the next 4 years. As the VP of Korean content says “ Korea has the ability to tell stories that resonate with global viewers”
I also subscribe to Viki and those two easily cover most of the dramas I want to see.
I agree with Annie- it’s hard to find the Korean content on disney. I eventually found it on Star but it’s quite lacklustre
Was Disney+ trying to compete with Netflix? Obviously it failed. Netflix doubled down on Kdramas with additional $2.5 billion investment early this year. I have never thought about watching Asian dramas on Disney+. Apparently Disney+ board of directors made a wrong market assessment and ended up being kicked out of the market.
Disney shot themselves in the foot with their refusal to license their K Dramas worldwide and restrict access to only a few countries. They missed out.
Yeah, that was really dumb. I never understood why they did that.
The is just a side-effect of the overhaul of Disney’s entire streaming business. Disney+ has never been profitable, and was driving $1B operating loss last quarter. Many of their senior execs got axed in the last round of layoffs, so the whole division is being restructured.
It doesn’t make sense to spend money on Korean streaming content when you haven’t even nailed your overall streaming strategy. Netflix is a streaming company. Disney is not.
Disney is so frustrating when it comes to K content. I’m based in Canada and we get nothing. The few k-content that’s available sucks. If they only improve the content, they wouldn’t have lost money.
I’m glad Disney bowed out. Hopefully most of the future dramas will continue to be split between Netflix and Viki. We’ll see if Amazon is next. Disney didn’t really even try. Netflix subs are a pain, but I have to applaud their effort in understanding the viewing habits of KDrama fans. They changed their original model of uploading the full episode count of a series, to uploading KDrama eps the same day they were airing on TV in Korea. This is something Disney didn’t do in North America. Even worse, after spending months thinking North America wasn’t getting the KDramas that were airing in Asia (with the exception of Snowdrop), it turns out those dramas had been uploaded to Hulu (which is majority owned by Disney) instead. All the press I saw about these upcoming dramas made no mention of them coming to Hulu instead of Disney+.
Agreed! I couldn’t watch most of these dramas on my Disney plus account because it was only available in Asia. Had to watch some of these on other platforms like Hulu.
I have Disney+ & there’s literally no contents. They should be call an archive streaming service, as all their watchable contents people already saw in theater. One would think, especially being in the business for so long, they would probably make it accessible for their subscribers and promote properly.
“Moving” is such a big production, but Disney way of promoting are lacking. For the actor’s sage, I hope people tune in.
Disney geo-locking all their, having the most nonsensical ranking system and giving their Korean original zero hype and promotions or even having a dedicated channel for them is the reason for their failure. They never figured out how to be a proper streaming platform but wanted to compete with Netflix. Prime Video is much better at producing original content than Disney which relied heavily on their past catalogue for their relevance. Frankly on Netflix knows how to advertise and popularize kdramas to an international audience. Everyone else is blindly trying to copy their model.
I was forced to download Disney+ to watch ” Call it love” because It was my new obsession and I was moving to Germany where unauthorised streaming is a pretty serious offence. Kept it for 2 months to discover if its worth it, verdict? NOT.
Theyre kinda pricy, don’t have a student plan, or a trial period. They’re kdrama collection is sad. Even though its available where I’m at, the mobile app apparently isn’t (very dumb), I watch a lot of things on ny phone.
They honestly should have allowed their dramas to be available elsewhere or just not produce any and stream ones airing in SK. For them to think with THEIR few kdramas people would subscribe, laughable. Call it love brought me but disney couldn’t keep me.
Aw Call It Love brought me back to Kdrama after a few years of break from drama land.
I agree with you. Kdramas produced or Licensed by Disney plus didn’t get the worldwide recognition it should have. Maybe big mouth but that is it. Is Disney trying to compete with Netflix in subscribers ? If so, they should make the k drama global. If they’re trying to be family friendly, they shouldn’t buy kdrama in the first place
I wonder if it might affect my most waited drama “The worst evil”..No way😥..Disney+ should be more flexible and do more effort on promoting..These dramas are soo good.Everyone works hard on them.Basically the issue is not about the content.
Honestly, almost all of the Disney+ kdramas sucked and sucked HARD. They spent all their money on star power but the scripts they produced were shit. I tried watching several shows bc I like the actors and had to drop them (or suffered through till the end), and they were not worth it. The only one I mostly liked was call it love, but it wasn’t exactly memorable either. If they had invested in quality all around (and had them available properly), it would have been a different story.
This is fake news.
I have not seen news of this anywhere else.
I am tired of K dramas constantly using hearing actors for Deaf roles. Case in point “Tell me you love me”. Get with the program people. Are their no Deaf Korean actors???? Maybe we should exclusively cast Japanese actors in Korean roles…yup that will be easier… argh!!!!
I am tired of K dramas constantly using hearing actors for Deaf roles. Case in point “Tell me you love me”. Get with the program people. Are there no Deaf Korean actors???? Maybe we should exclusively cast Japanese actors in Korean roles…yup that will be easier… argh!!!!