"Who does Disney think is going to pay $30 to see something on Disney+?" is a boring question. I can tell you some answers for it but it's not very interesting.

"Who does Disney think will go see a movie in US theaters one month into the school year?" is a better one. https://twitter.com/verge/status/1290751194730823680

The answer to that better question: is not nearly enough people for it to be worth the risk.

Releasing it as DLC on Disney+ is *far* from a slam dunk in terms of making back the revenue from a theater run, but that should tell you how worried they are, that it's the better deal

So I'm filing this news from Disney away with the tidbits like Google's long-term plans, in terms of my forecast for what the future's going to look like in the short, medium, and long term.

As I read it, by the way, they're *not* planning a US release in theaters at all. The "some markets" appears to refer to a line in the article that mentions countries without Disney+.

For my family, the math is pretty simple: we would have spent something like $36-45 on theater tickets alone to see it, so if we're doing okay in September we probably will see it. Normally I'd worry about encouraging bad behavior but... keeping things out of theaters is good.

Would I rather they dump movies onto the streaming service for no additional fee? Obviously. Give me free stuff. I don't want streaming services to adopt a DLC/premium content model.

But yay for normalizing not going to the cinema right now.

One thing I'm thinking of is, there's no real actual target to hit for this experimental streaming release. They can compare it to what they expected in theaters, but if it's way off, it's not "Oh, the movie bombed." https://twitter.com/Lesley_NOPE/status/1290786148227387392

In terms of for the future in a post-covid world... man, if they would have offered simultaneous at home VOD releases for big movies, I would have been able to see way more movies with my mother in the last years of her life. So many accessibility issues fixed.

Anyway. The big takeaway from this is that however ridiculous a gamble you think it is for Disney to bet on $30 video-on-demand for Mulan... the people who count beans and push papers looked at the situation and thought it was a better gamble than a theater opening this fall.

And honestly, I would say this year. Given how messed up movie productions and releases have been, I think if they had any confidence about as far away as Thanksgiving/December, they'd have made this a holiday release to preserve its box office run.

If they start doing this/keep doing it after theaters are open... file it under yet another thing disabled people have asked for but were told was unreasonable/impossible, until covid. https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1290787247340630023