Ever since Disney acquired Fox and also announced plans for their streaming service, fans have been wondering what direction the House of Mouse would take. It was widely speculated that one of the reasons Disney opted to buy Fox in the first place is because they wanted a thicker library of content for Disney+, which will be launching in the US this November. This caused a lot of us to wonder if Disney would actually host R-rated content on their platform as well. After all, while the Fox-owned Avatar is PG-13, a lot of Fox’s other popular properties like the Alien franchise, Logan and Deadpool are R-rated.
However, this does not appear to be the case. During Disney’s 2019 D23 Expo, entertainment journalist Eric Vespe enquired if the Disney+ streaming service would host R-rated content and if any of Fox’s more adult-oriented content would make it on to the platform. To which the Disney representative responded that Disney+ will be fully PG-13 or softer. The representative also smiled when asked if the edgier adult-driven content were heading to Hulu (another streaming platform that is fully-controlled and majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company).
I followed up asking if Fox’s harder edge stuff would end up on Hulu and just got a smile and “that’s a good assumption” in return.
— Eric Vespe (@EricVespe) August 24, 2019
This comes at the heels of Disney pulling the plug on their Book of Enchantment Disney Plus series, a project inspired by villains-branded books which centred around popular Disney baddies like Ursula and Maleficent. Deadline reported that executives were unhappy when it became clear that the series was “going into a darker direction than anticipated.”
It’s quite the bummer. Much like Netflix’s kids’ section, Disney could have easily come up with a section solely for adult-oriented content — a section that would require a special parental pin code to access or something along those lines. Alas, maybe we were being overly optimistic in the first place.
Disney+/Disney Plus will be launching in the US this November. It’s still unclear when it will arrive at Malaysian waters.
