Disney Launches Hulu on Disney+

Disney+ uses can officially access Hulu shows and movies inside of their existing Disney+ app. People looking for this feature will already have to be signed up for Hulu. However, Disney is looking to streamline things a bit and add more dual Hulu and Disney+ subscribers to the fold. Fans of the blue service will now be getting some recommendations for Hulu programing along with the Disney+ fare that shows up there normally. In an interesting wrinkle, the company believes that this integration might be able to alert viewers to content they were already paying for that might have slipped under the radar.

Some Disney+ users were already a part of the beta deployment of Hulu’s tab within the service. Adding Hulu to the regular ad-supported tier of the streamer costs $9.99/ month and $19.99/month without ads. (That’s $2 more than just Disney+ with ads for tucking in Hulu and $6 more for getting Hulu in there without ads.) Check out the commercial spot that Disney’s rolling out down below to hype the new bundle.

Disney+ And Hulu Under One Roof

Disney CEO Bob Iger unveiled his plans for this unified streaming experience more than a year ago. But, he talked up the combined Hulu and Disney+ during 2023’s last investor call. He targeted March of 2024 and they actually managed to get it done.

“Speaking of Hulu, we were pleased to announce last week that we will acquire the remaining stake in Hulu held by Comcast, which will further Disney streaming objective,” Iger said last fall. “We remain on track to roll out more unified one app experience domestically, making expensive general entertainment content available to bundle subscribers via Disney+….We expect that Hulu and Disney plus will result in increased engagement, greater advertising opportunities, lower churn and reduced customer acquisition costs, thereby increasing our overall margins. We will launch a beta version for bundle subscribers in December, giving parents time to set up profiles and parental controls that work best for their families ahead of the official launch in early spring 2024.”

“In December, we launch a beta version of Hulu and Disney plus combined. We feel really good about that. I saw some basically some demos of that just yesterday,” he revealed. “As a matter of fact, we are basically putting it in beta so that we can prepare parents largely to basically implement parental controls, because you’ll be able to access Hulu programming on the same app. And then in late March, we’ll launch it basically in full form and think we have opportunities in terms of upsell capabilities. In terms of increasing engagement. We found that where we bundled we lower churn, and again, these are steps that are all taken to ultimately turn this into a great business.”

Disney Ending Password Sharing As Well 

Like a lot of streamers, Hulu is following the lead of Netflid and trying to limit password sharing in 2024. People in different households are going to find themselves locked out of the group accounts they may have been using this spring. In an email to subscribers, Disney laid out their plan for onboarding users who don’t live in the same household.

“Unless otherwise permitted by your Service Tier, you may not share your subscription outside of your household,” the email read in part.. “‘Household’ means the collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein.”

“We may, in our sole discretion, analyze the use of your account to determine compliance with this Agreement,” the email adds. “If we determine, in our sole discretion, that you have violated this Agreement, we may limit or terminate access to the Service and/or take any other steps as permitted by this Agreement.”

Are you going to subscribe to both? Let us know down in the comments!