Disney+ Rumored to Be Merging With Hulu

The Walt Disney Company truly has an embarrassment of riches, owning a staggering amount of content across a number of brands, with a new rumor from Collider claiming that the company is looking at ways to merge its Disney+ streaming service with Hulu for one all-encompassing platform. Disney had been planning its launch of Disney+ for years, with the studio's purchase of a majority of 20th Century Fox's assets last year bringing a number of new properties, and platforms, under one umbrella. It's hard to deny that things would be much easier if the brands were combined, but there are still some questions about how such a move would happen.

Currently, Disney+ has roughly 73 million subscribers while Hulu has roughly 36 million, so finding a way to tout one platform that has 110 million subscribers would surely give such a streaming platform more firepower to make important deals. The big issue, however, is the strict delineation that currently exists between the type of content available on both services. On Disney+, everything could easily be described as "family-friendly," as even their PG-13 fare is the tone of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars films, earning these ratings due to mild language or intense action. Hulu, however, has R-rated and TV-MA content that many parents wouldn't like their children to accidentally stumble across.

Despite both services being owned by Disney, Hulu and Disney+ operate independently of one another. However, what would likely be the best strategy for the company to merge these two brands is to create one streaming umbrella that could be launched that would house both services. For example, when a streaming app is launched, most users must first select which user profile they are using before being granted access to content, so if one streaming app would launch and then request that you select Disney+ or Hulu to proceed, there wouldn't be too many issues regarding interface integration.

Ever since Disney acquired Fox's assets, one of the biggest questions audiences have had is what the family-friendly studio would do with their R-rated brands. With a third Deadpool film scoring writers in recent weeks, a film series known for fully embracing the R-rated nature of the character, the studio has seemingly confirmed that it won't be watering down its more abrasive brands, with a potential merger of its streaming platforms seeming like an inevitability.

Stay tuned for details on the future of the streaming services.

Would you like to see the platforms combined? Let us know in the comments below! If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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