The children’s lockdown lifesaver is about to launch a streaming service for adults, showcasing the familiar, the forgettable and the odd curveball…
It’s nearly a year since Disney+ made its way to the
UK in what must surely rank as one of the most fortuitously timed launches in media history. Just as
Britain went into its first Covid-19 lockdown, harried parents were suddenly presented with approximately a zillion hours of
Disney and Disney-adjacent streaming content, from classic animation to National Geographic to The Mandalorian.
Child-free adults with little interest in family fare, however, could safely give it a miss. Cue the arrival of Star, a separate hub of grown-up programming within the service, where Disney’s takeover of 20th Century Studios, Touchstone Pictures and the ABC television network, among others, comes into play. Star launches on Tuesday with more than 270 films and 70 series, largely pulled from the recent archives: a thousand more titles are promised within the first year. You can’t have Star without the rest of Disney+, or vice versa: that means an increase in the Disney+ subscription rate from £5.99 to £7.99 a month (or £59.99 to £79.99 annually). New subscribers will pay the new rate immediately, although any subscriptions taken out before Tuesday’s launch have a six-month grace period before the increase kicks in.