Mulan: Poll Shows Majority Won’t Pay $30 to Rent on Disney+

A majority of respondents polled by ComicBook.com say they won't pay the $29.99 fee to rent [...]

By Cameron Bonomolo

A majority of respondents polled by ComicBook.com say they won't pay the $29.99 fee to rent Disney's Mulan when the live-action remake is available to stream on Disney+ via "premiere access" starting September 4. Referred to as a "one-off" by Disney CEO Bob Chapek amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Mulan's straight-to-streaming premiere offers Disney+ customers "continuous access" to the film for as long as they subscribe to the service. The decision to premiere Mulan on Disney+ through the premium VOD model comes after Disney delayed the Niki Caro-directed remake from March 27 to July 24, and again from its late July date theatrical date to August 21.

In a Twitter poll asking whether voters will spend $29.99 to rent Mulan on Disney+, 15.4% voted "yes," while the remaining 84.6% of the 4,195 respondents voted "no." A similar poll conducted by Variety, which ended with 93,751 votes, found that 14.7% of respondents voted "yes," while the other 85.3% voted "no."

Mulan marks the first time Disney has offered one of its films through the premium video-on-demand model via Disney+. In late March, following an abbreviated theatrical run due to theater closures, Disney sent Pixar's Onward to digital platforms; two weeks later, the film joined the Disney+ library without additional cost.

Other films, including Artemis Fowl and Hamilton, were added to the service and were readily available to subscribers after abandoning planned theatrical release windows. The Bryan Cranston-starring The One and Only Ivan will follow a similar path on August 21.

The decision to price Mulan at $29.99 on top of the monthly $6.99 fee has drawn mixed reactions on social media since being announced Tuesday. Some movie fans have expressed a willingness to pay premium prices for an at-home viewing of Black Widow, the latest tentpole from Marvel Studios, while some have balked at the price for the latest Disney re-imagining that left out music and fan-favorite characters from the 1998 animated original.

"We're very pleased to be able to bring Mulan to our consumer base that has been waiting for it for a long, long time as we've had to, unfortunately, move our theatrical date several times," Chapek said during a Disney investors call. "We are looking at Mulan as one-off as opposed to saying there is some new business windowing model that we are looking at."

"That said, we find it very interesting to be able to take a new offering to consumers at that $29.99 price and learn from it and see what happens not only in terms of the uptick of the number of subscribers we got on the platform, but also the number of transactions we get on that PVOD offering," he continued.

The film will reach select theaters in territories where Disney+ is not available. In the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several Western European countries, Mulan will be offered for Disney+ rentals starting September 4.

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