LOS ANGELES:
Walt Disney Co’s Mulan will skip most of the world’s theaters and go directly to its streaming platform in September, the media giant said on Tuesday.
US subscribers to Disney+ will need to pay $30 to stream Mulan in their homes, Chief Executive Bob Chapek said on a call with investors after the company reported quarterly earnings. The cost will vary slightly in other countries including Canada, Australia and New Zealand and in parts of Western Europe, he added.
The decision came amid uncertainty about when big theatre chains in the US will reopen after being shuttered since mid-March because of coronavirus.
Mulan will be released September 4, Chapek revealed. The film, reported to have cost $200 million to produce, is a remake of an animated Disney classic about a female Chinese warrior and stars Yifei Liu in the title role.
Disney’s decision followed a deal in July between Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures and cinema chain AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc to allow the studio to release films directly to consumers after just three weeks in theatres, down from the average three months.
Chapek insisted the plan represented a one-time shift and did not signal a change to Disney’s long-term film strategy. Mulan had been scheduled to release in March but that got postponed several times. Most recently, it was set to debut August 21 and theatre operators had hoped it would help spark a late-summer rebound.
Last month, Disney said it was postponing the debut of Mulan indefinitely while it assessed its options.
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