Since the company first began reshaping the way consumers enjoy their favorite content, Netflix has always been the predominant force in streaming. Incepted in 1997 well before the beginning of the streaming dominated era we are now in, they benefited immensely from being the first service of their kind and saw success virtually immediately once consumers began to make the switch to streaming. Things have begun to change however, with a number of other competitive streaming services popping up over the year that have come to reduce Netflix’s market share dramatically since the company’s humble beginnings; fun fact: Hulu was a joint effort by NBC and Fox to directly compete with Netflix in the streaming space and was essentially the first to follow the streaming giant. Some news that broke today truly illuminates how much that space has changed and the direction in which it might be shifting: Marvel announced plans to remove a variety of series from Netflix in favor of their parent company’s still relatively new streaming service, Disney+.
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Disney+ wasn’t launched until about 6 months before the COVID-19 pandemic began in September of 2019 but has seen considerable success despite being infantile relative to either of the aforementioned companies. Before then though, Marvel was forced to take their intellectual property which couldn’t be turned into big budget films to Netflix to develop them into smaller projects that could continue to entertain their massive and fervent fanbase. Now that Disney+ has found its footing however, that is set to change: Marvel made an announcement that they would be removing titles like Daredevil, Jessica Jones and The Punisher from Netflix and taking them over to Disney+ in Canada beginning next month. This is a huge loss for Netflix give the massive size of Marvel’s fanbase, and if a move like this one should follow it in the U.S. would have even greater implications for the streaming giant. For now we will just have to wait and see, but it looks like Netflix’s reign as number one might not last much longer.
Netflix set the foundation for the streaming era and the service will always have a place in the entertainment industry so long as consumers continue to stream their favorite content. While that won’t change, their status as the top dog is certainly being challenged by the likes of DIsney+ with this move. It should be interesting to see what follows next.
