Disney Won’t “Chase Bucks” But Will License Some Content to Netflix, Bob Iger Says

While Disney will continue to license some of its content to third parties, CEO Bob Iger said the company won’t “chasing money” by giving away its core brands.

“We have licensed content to Netflix, and we will continue to do so. We are now in discussions with them about some options, but I wouldn’t expect us to license our core brands to them. Those are real, obviously competitive advantages for us and differentiators,” Iger said.

“For example, Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars are all doing very well on our platform, and I don’t see why we should do that just to chase money, when they are really very important building blocks. for the current and future of our streaming business,” he continued.

This comes after Iger rejected the idea of ​​licensing the studio’s content specifically to Netflix, he said in a January 2022 interview with The New York Times that it would be like “selling nuclear weapons technology to a third world country, and now they use it against us.”

He reversed his position on the matter at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on April 3, where he said for the first time that the company would not license its core brands to third parties but would “occasionally” consider licensing other products to give.

This stance still stands in contrast to the moves of WBD CEO David Zaslav, who has aggressively licensed his company’s content, including titles like Westworld And The Nevers to Tubi and Roku and other major titles such as Insecure And Dune to Netflix. This comes as Zaslav tries to pay off the company’s debts.

Still, Zaslav said during the earnings call earlier Wednesday that content that is “heavily” consumed on Max, such as white Lotus And The last of us, will likely remain exclusive to the platform to “differentiate the brand.” However, he added that “there’s a lot of content that isn’t heavily consumed on Max, and so those are the easy ones.”

Licensed content is non-exclusive to those platforms, he added, and has a runtime of three to six months, meaning viewers can see a DC movie on another video-on-demand platform and then return to Max.

“We have found that we will only do this when economic conditions matter. But in many cases it really helps us get people to come back and then see the full bouquet of DC movies,” he said.

Many other streamers have also licensed content to Netflix, including that of NBCUniversal To takeas well as Paramount, which agreed to license its animated series Star Trek: Child Wonder to Netflix following its cancellation at Paramount+.