Will New Star Wars Trilogy Help Disney Recover and Compete With Netflix?

According to Reuters, Disney's disappointing quarterly results and obvious struggles with their television business needed some positive overshadowing, and it seems that the promise of a new Star Wars trilogy was just enough to raise the company's shares by 1 percent on Thursday---when they announced that director Rian Johnson (director of the upcoming film "Star Wars: The Last Jedi") has agreed to create a new trilogy in the series. 

Disney has been working hard to hold on to viewers as consumers have been bailing on cable networks and opting for online platforms such as Netflix. Disney is launching a streaming service to compete with Netflix, and it is their hope that a "Star Wars" TV series will help to capture online audiences.

Disney definitely needs a slam dunk very soon since ESPN has lost a lot of subscribers and revenue to online sports broadcasters.The company is focused on developing its streaming service and has placed it as its top priority this year. Next year they are planning to launch their sports-focused service "ESPN Plus" and then by 2019 all new Disney content would go directly to Disney's streaming service and not Netflix, and they claim that their service will cost substantially less than Netflix because they will have less content.

One could argue that by pricing their service much lower than Netflix, Disney has actually positioned the consumer with an "either-and" proposition not an "either-or" one. Netflix is already priced around $9.99 per month which is extremely affordable especially in comparison to cable providers. So if Disney prices their service at less than $5 per month, it still would be an affordable price point for a consumer to subscribe to both service providers, rather than abandoning Netflix altogether just to be limited to Disney-produced programming. No different than those of us who subscribe to both Netflix and Hulu to gain greater access to more content. Or those of us who subscribe to Pandora and either Spotify or Apple Music (or both).

Basically if the price point is low enough the consumer can afford to bear the minimal cost. What moves us to abandon one service over the other is greater access to resources, ease of delivery and viewing/listening, cost, content, and how intrusive the provider's site is when it pertains to sponsored advertising by third parties. Disney will soon find out if it has what it takes to go up against Netflix. It will also learn if it can regroup from some other hard hits it has taken. 

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