Disney made it official in an SEC filing late Friday that it will officially take $1.5 billion in content writedowns associated with removing streaming programming from its platforms.
That’s on the low end of the range provided by the company last month as it released quarterly earnings and first revealed plans to pull individual film and TV titles from its Disney+ and Hulu services.
Said product removal took effect on May 26th as dozens of series were removed from global streaming circulation, including “Willow,” “Y: The Last Man,” “The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers,” “The Hot Zone,” “Big Shot,” “Turner & Hooch,” “Diary of a Future President,” “Dollface,” “Little Demon” “The Mysterious Benedict Society” and more.
The filing adds that a review of remaining streaming fare is continuing and Disney expects more programming to be removed from direct-to-consumer and other platforms – mostly before the end of the quarter.
Disney is projecting a further $400 million in further content impairment charges from those additional cuts. It comes as Disney, like many in this field, is hitting the wall of reality that an endless digital library of a studio’s back catalogue is unsustainable economically.
In addition, the filing says the company “may terminate certain license agreements for the right to use content on its platforms”. CEO Bob Iger is steering the company through a significant belt-tightening effort. The company recently completed layoffs of about 7,000 employees.
Source: Deadline
