KOLKATA: The Walt Disney Company (Disney) is going more aggressive on streaming. It will launch an international direct-to-consumer general entertainment OTT offering under the Star brand in India in the year 2021.

The offering will be rooted in the content from the production engines and libraries of ABC Studios, Fox Television, FX, Freeform, 20th Century Studios and Searchlight. While in many markets the offering will be fully integrated into Disney+ platform from both a marketing and a technology perspective, it will be distributed under the Star brand in India.

“In terms of the general entertainment offering internationally, we want to mirror successful Disney+ strategy by using our Disney+ technical platform, rooting it in content that we already own and distributing it under a successful international brand that we also already own which is, of course, Star and then bringing it to market in a very close association to Disney,” The Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Chapek said in the earnings call after Q3 results. 

“In terms of the premier access idea, as you probably know, Disney tentpole blockbuster theatrical films can be fairly expensive to make and produce in order to get the quality that consumers expect from us and frankly to get the quality that we expect from us. Rather than simply rolling it into a free offering, we thought we would give again because we can test almost anything when you have your own platform. We thought we would give it a try to establish a new window - a premier access window to try to recapture some of that investment that we've got. All I'll say about our research is that it shows that such an offering under a premier access offering not only gets us revenue from the original transaction from the PVOD but also acts as a fairly large stimulus to sign up for Disney+,” he added.