Star Wars & Marvel Movies Are Officially Leaving Netflix

Disney CEO Bob Iger has confirmed that all Star Wars and Marvel Cinematic Universe movies will leave Netflix once the Mouse House launches a streaming service of their own. Rumors of Disney making such a decision started to rise just a few months ago when it was announced that Disney is developing a streaming service for all of its own films. The proposed service would bring Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, and any other Disney made film under one streaming umbrella. However, upon the initial discussion of such a service, it was not clear if things would actually shake out that way.


After the report surfaced, another came that Netflix was actively working with Disney to keep two beloved franchises on the world’s biggest streaming service. However, it appears they’ve come up empty in such a request, as both MCU and Star Wars movies will leave Netflix by 2019.

Iger confirmed the news during a Q&A at a Bank of America Merril Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference. Various reporters were in attendance to hear what Iger had to say, and Ricardo Lopez shared the news about the change online (see below). According to Iger, “We’ve now decided we will put the Marvel and Star Wars movie on this app as well.”

From a business perspective, it is understandable why Disney would want to bring their two biggest franchises with them as they launched a service that would compete directly with Netflix. Not only will the draw of having the ability to stream hypothetically any Star Wars or MCU film instantly be appealing for fans, but it also opens up the door for original content to be included later on. Although such plans have not yet been confirmed, Disney will surely be able to sell more people on the existence of yet another streaming service that they have to subscribe to – if they can put Star Wars and Marvel at the forefront.

That said, this could ultimately force fans to chose between Disney and Netflix. Since Disney’s service won’t launch for roughly two years, they have not yet announced the full specifications of their service, or how much it will cost. Asking people to pay potentially a premium amount for a smaller catalog of films could will force some to chose whether to leave Netflix for Disney, lose access to Disney’s films, or pay double the amount of money to keep both.

Losing Marvel and Star Wars is obviously not ideal for Netflix either, which is why the latter wanted to keep them. Then again, Netflix is currently (and rapidly) expanding its library of original content – and will presumably remain the home of Marvel shows like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and so forth, in the future – so they should still have plenty of good content to offer their subscribers. That said, the loss of both mega-franchises could lead to Netflix looking for alternative properties to fill their spots, so to speak. That’s something to keep an eye out for, moving forward.