A few days ago the first major content purge from Disney+ and Hulu took place. The company led by Bob Iger decided to remove several dozen series, movies and programs from the streaming platform with the intention of saving several million dollars in taxes.. Among those affected we find ‘Willow’ or ‘The Mysterious Benedict Society’, among many others.
According to collect Deadline, The Walt Disney Company has declared a $1.5 billion “impairment charge”. In other words, they consider that the deleted titles do not represent the value they expected for the company and they can withdraw them to offset taxes and save the expenses that could arise from having them on the platform, such as the payment of royalties. Although it is a high figure, from the company they expected to achieve savings of between 1.5 and 1.8 billion dollars.
Perhaps that is why they are already advancing they will continue to remove content from Disney + with the intention of saving another 400 million dollars. This second purge could take place at the end of this June to fit in with the company’s fiscal calendar. They also advance that they could cancel content license agreements from other companies on their platforms.
The Lifeboat That Wasn’t
Disney continues like this with its plan to weather the storm generated by the recession and that streaming has not turned out to be the panacea that the audiovisual industry believed it would be as a result of the pandemic. A few days ago, the company completed the process of massive layoffs for which they have cut 7,000 jobs.
Among the readjustments that they have announced to balance expenses, one of the main ones is to reduce the amount of content they produce for streaming. The objective of all these movements is a saving of 5.5 billion dollars.
Reference-www.ecartelera.com
