Disney+ has launched its general entertainment brand Star today in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Canada – becoming the sixth ‘silo’ sitting alongside Marvel, Pixar and the like atop the Disney+ app.
Star is the outlet’s hub for more grown-up programming and mostly consists of its 20th Century Fox catalogue and various ABC and other Disney-owned network series. That content has been fully integrated into the app and comes up in a search, though strong parental controls can be set to separate and lock-off said content.
A glance at the Australian ‘Star’ catalogue sees various ABC series (Grey’s Anatomy, Boston Legal, Castle, Desperate Housewives), FOX live-action series (Bones, Prison Break, 24, The X-Files), the prime time FOX Animation line-up (Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad), series produced by Fox TV for other networks (Burn Notice, Homeland, The Killing) and some recent Hulu shows (Love Victor, Solar Opposites).
Notably missing on the Australian service are any FX series and some ABC and Hulu originals. However, many of those shows are already part of deals with other local platforms like Stan who has “Justified” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Netflix who has “Fargo” and “Archer,” and Binge who has “Sons of Anarchy” and “The Americans”.
Movie wise, the section is packed with titles from 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight, and Touchstone Pictures. That includes films that were released domestically through other studios but released overseas by Fox, such as “Braveheart” and “Titanic”.
Titles that are already on 4K UHD disc such as “Alien,” “Die Hard,” and “Predator” see those quality transfers brought across to the service here. There are some odd omissions, including the second and fourth of the original five “Planet of the Apes” movies.
Stranger still is Chris Columbus’ classic “Adventures in Babysitting” being included with an ‘edited for content’ warning, and all the film’s few uses of swearing dubbed over – so far, it seems to be the only film edited for content even as other and much more hardcore films on the service are fully intact.
Film & TV titles will vary from market to market. ‘Star’ effectively caters for the lack of Hulu, which will now remain essentially a U.S. domestic only outlet. It also allows Disney to produce a wider range of content for global distribution and plans to have more than 35 first-run series premiere on the service by the end of the first year.
