Disney Facing 'Resistance' From Turner in Effort to Get TV Rights of 'Star Wars' Films for Streaming Service

I am not looking forward to this new world where you have to subscribe to 10 different streaming services to see the desired content. I think the best advice is just to avoid them all until they do sharing agreements.

I am not looking forward to this new world where you have to subscribe to 10 different streaming services to see the desired content. I think the best advice is just to avoid them all until they do sharing agreements.

They had that. It was called cable or satt service: one fee for content from nearly all providers.

We the consumers then started wishing that away, deluded by some idea that we should be able to buy only the channels we want to watch for a huge discount off of the 200-500 channel bundled pricing. Of course, no other player in the chain wanted to do that... nor has to do that.

So now, we continue marching toward a point where we'll be spending MORE than we were before for less available content... or spending less but doing without ready access to stuff we actually would have historically enjoyed being able to watch and/or other compromises, especially to quality of programming (stuff like Dolby Digital sound, full-featured DVR functions, etc).

With this Disney move, it appears that maybe 2 or 3 companies will end up controlling almost all of the video content, much like 2 or 3 companies pretty much dominate the cellular service space. Elimination of healthy competition typically leads to consumers paying more... often for less (because where you going to go?). Example right here in this topic: Disney is wanting to become the lone source of Star Wars content. If you really want access to that via stream, you will HAVE to be a subscriber to Disney. Other players like Comcast and AT&T are very likely to be buying big libraries to basically do the same kind of thing: "If you want what we have, you HAVE to buy it from us." As Apple people well aware of exclusivity and "lock in" concepts, we know how that goes very well... and how relatively expensive that can be.

Cheaper options like Netflix will lose more desirable content to the big dogs that are rolling their own Netflix-like services (but NOT at a Netflix-like price). I expect the cheap options to die not because they can't function at current pricing but because access to the desirable content will be monetized accordingly... and only available from one source elsewhere.

Many of us celebrated Disney's purchase of Fox but that also gives Disney 60% ownership of Hulu. Care to guess where Hulu traditional cheaper pricing will go after the deal is fully done?

Disney is much like Apple in terms of wanting to be paid top dollar for their products, and flexing their muscles to create lock-in exclusivity so they can be the only source. Around here, many seem to wish away the Spotifys, the Samsungs, the PC vendors, the Microsofts, the Google's etc as if Apple gaining complete control over stuff that currently has competition would be great for us consumers. And if that happened? Apple would charge whatever it wants and we would whine about how expensive it is... just as we often do now when there are at least SOME competitors. This will go the same way.

I saw some information that said the typical US household spends about $73/month on television service (cable/satt). The cord cutter crowd has some delusion of getting what they want for much less than whatever they used to pay for cable or satt. However, the suppliers look at a number like $73/month/household and work hard every day on how to GROW that number. Their goal is to pull that up... just like Apple looking to pull up how much each iPhone buyer spends on new iPhones + increasingly near-necessary accessory items.

Disney is positioning to make streaming video much more profitable. As we know from Apple experiences, "much more profits" don't come from pockets other than our own. The squeeze is coming soon. I suspect we'll soon realize in full that our "savings" gets us much less than we used to get and that "the future" options to approximate the old, "antiquated", "rip off" options will prove more expensive on a per month, per household basis.

If so, the moral of the story is a very, very old one: Be careful what you wish for.
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Here is an idea: make 1 single streaming service that provides all movies and all series, instead of tens smaller ones.

This part is possible. And Apple has largely already set up just such a service many years ago. The problem?

Pay 20-30-50 bucks per month and that’s it.

Nobody else in the supply channel is motivated to take the HUGE hit to deliver everything for cheaper. That's OUR delusion. We believe we can somehow get that.

We might as well extrapolate that out with expectations of new iPhones for- say- $100 and new MB Pros for- say- $100 too. It's basically the same. Apple as creators and owners of their products want to make a target revenue + profit from their creations. And creators and owners of video content want to do the exact same thing. Just as Apple won't arbitrarily decide to give us huge discounts so we can buy new iDevices and Macs at dirt-cheap prices, so it goes for owners of other kinds of products too.

The single service with everything is attainable if we are willing to pay up big for that. Apple has actually been pretty close to that for many years now.

However, if we demand a relatively large discount off of normal for cable/satt, we should expect significant compromises, lack of availability, fragmented sources, etc... pretty much exactly as this is unfolding. There is no magical player- Apple included- who can bring everything to us for nearly nothing in cost.

Turner has Disney over a barrel and rightfully so. Disney agreed in 2016 (!) to a long term deal. Everybody knew streaming was the future in 2016. Turner should hold out for big money and big programming.

Off topic... damn I hope the merger lets Disney issue original versions of the original trilogy... I’m not buying or streaming the “special editions” any more...

I am not looking forward to this new world where you have to subscribe to 10 different streaming services to see the desired content. I think the best advice is just to avoid them all until they do sharing agreements.

I laugh every time I read a comment similar to yours regarding subscription to multiple services.

It was not too long ago that a lot of members here and online elsewhere were yelling about a la carte content. Specifically buying “channels” separately. I and other got shouted down when we said that wouldn’t work out how they imagined. That it would be expensive.

Now what we have said is coming through.

Bottom line, if you want to see Star Wars movie just buy the Blu ray, use the download code included and watch it when you want to...over and over again.

Star Wars - the original from 1977 - was released theatrically five times before the Special Editions came out. 1977, 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1982. And every single time, Lucas changed things. Whether it was color correction, sound effects, even entire lines of dialogue, the movie was changed every time it was re-released. The Special Edition merely represented the largest set of changes all at once, with the aid of CGI.

And then it was changed again and again and again every time it was released on home video prior to 1997. VHS, Laserdisc, multiple times.

So tell me, which version of Star Wars do you want? The 1982 version? The 1978 version? The 1981 version? The 1977 version? Any of the home releases?

Which version is it that you think you remember as being the one true version?

The 1977 version that I saw at the theater in 1977.
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The "Special Editions" aren't the "Special Editions" anymore. They're the only editions. And Disney doesn't call the shots unless they feel like stepping in and overriding the desires of their subsidiaries. They don't do day-to-day micromanagement, it's not their style. Lucasfilm is still Lucasfilm. With George gone, Lucasfilm might decide on their own to release the original movies in whatever format you think you remember (they've been altered and tinkered with every time they were released in theaters and every time they were released on home video, so whatever you think you remember is probably not what everyone else remembers). But releasing those older versions - plural, for each film - to a very small but vocal subset of fans who keep insisting they want them would be expensive. Because it wouldn't be enough for them to give you the unaltered versions. No, you want cleaned-up visuals, 4K quality, color correction, and all the good stuff, but without the stupid "Jedi Rocks" song from Jabba's palace. And I know that because we already got the unaltered original movies on DVD and you guys still complained it wasn't good enough.

It's unlikely Lucasfilm will do it.

You'll have to settle for the fan edits on YouTube.

Back on topic...

Everyone has a price. Turner will set a price for the rights, and Disney will pay it. It's not complicated. Turner Broadcasting is a very, very small fish in a pond that's rapidly drying up. Cable networks? Seriously? Turner Broadcasting will be lucky if WarnerMedia doesn't cast them off in the next five years. Very few of their assets are profitable to begin with.

I have no idea how profitable they are, but TCM is one of the best channels on cable.

They had that. It was called cable or satt service: one fee for content from nearly all providers.

We the consumers then started wishing that away, deluded by some idea that we should be able to buy only the channels we want to watch for a huge discount off of the 200-500 channel bundled pricing. Of course, no other player in the chain wanted to do that... nor has to do that.

This Disney approach is not a la carte tv at all. Disney is pulling all content into a separate provider, with a separate subscription.

What I find now, is that it is more satisfying to go outside, walk around, talk to the neighbors, etc. than watch TV with its Fake News, and movies that are more propaganda than entertaining. I know that has nothing to do with Disney's new subscription service, except that they, and other media providers, value their service much more than I do.

Which version is it that you think you remember as being the one true version?

When people say "theatrical version" in film-speak, they do not mean theatrical re-release versions.

And MEDIUM tweaks (color correction, despeckling, repairs, etc) are parsecs different than CONTENT tweaks (character changes, robots slapsticking in poop, etc).

I don't understand why Disney is getting bent out of shape over one network's ability to show only 5 movies, of everything that Disney owns. The deal ends in 2024 (not that far away). Those 5 movies, even though they are Star Wars, aren't going to keep people away from Disney's streaming service. Anyone who wants to watch these movies that bad, already owns them.
I get that Disney wants to be able to say that it's 100% exclusive content, not available anywhere else. They can still claim to have exclusive content.
Instead, Disney needs to worry more about what they are doing to Star Wars.

I have no interest unless it's the theatrical versions of the OT.