Disney+ Topped 73M Paid Subscriptions in Fiscal Q4, Says Chapek

paid subscribers in the quarter ended Oct. 3 and had 73.7 million for the year, “far surpassing our expectations,” said Chapek. Disney+, already available in more than 20 countries, will launch Tuesday in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico and arrive in more overseas markets in the next year, said Chapek. Disney will update its global subscriber numbers at its Dec. 10 investor day, he said. The “full suite” of Disney streaming services, including ESPN+ and Hulu, surpassed 120 million paid subs in the quarter, he said. The pending launch of the Star-branded “general entertainment” streaming offering “will enable us to grow our business even further in the years ahead,” he said. Disney narrowed the operating loss in its DTC business by about $170 million from a year earlier, to $580 million, said Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy. “Higher results” at ESPN+ and Hulu drove the improvement, which was “partially offset by costs associated with the ongoing rollout of Disney+,” she said. Disney plans to continue ramping up its investment in DTC, said Chapek. “We will be heavily tilting the scale from linear networks over to our DTC business.” The studio was “very pleased” with the results of Mulan. Though Mulan “met with some controversy” globally after its Disney+ release, the company had “enough very positive results” before that controversy “to know that we've got something here in terms of the premier access strategy,” Chapek said, promising more details at next month’s investor conference. Disney faced a global backlash when Mulan’s closing credits thanked a Chinese government agency accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang for its help in the production.