Disney has now taken yet another step further in conquering the world as they’ve now fully acquired controlling rights over Hulu. Disney will launch their own exclusive Streaming Service in November, i.e. Disney+. They will play all the family friendly content there while all the R-Rated and mature content will be developed for Hulu. This way Disney will actually be able to compete with the streaming giants like Amazon Prime and Netflix with 2 of their own Streaming Services.
As of Tuesday Morning, Disney & Comcast announced a new deal which gives Disney the whole creative control over the streaming service for the next 5 years. This doesn’t mean that Disney completely owns Hulu now as Comcast still has a 33% ownership share on the streaming service. Having Acquired Fox, Disney also acquired their share over the service and they’ve also bought WB’s 10% ownership making them the bigger owner of Hulu.
This new deal that Disney & Comcast have agreed upon is what you may call a “put/call” agreement which has a 5-year contract period. Post that period Comcast can require Disney to purchase NBCUniversal’s 33% ownership stake or Disney can require NBCUniversal to sell their stake to the highest bidder at fair market value.
In this 5 year period, Disney has come to an agreement for to stream all of NBCUniversal’s content on Hulu while Disney gets to produce original content for the streaming service. As of now, Disney is producing quite a lot of exclusive Marvel content to release on Hulu. We’ve got 4 Marvel Animated shows including MODOK, Howard the Duck, Hit-Monkey and Tigra & Dazzler coming our way.
Talking about the Live Action content, Marvel’s Runaways turned out to be very successful, and that success has now led to two new shows in the name of Ghost Rider and Helstorm. After being introduced by Agents of SHIELD, Marvel is finally making a move upon Gabriel Luna’s Ghost Rider. He hasn’t returned to the show after his appearances in Season 4, but now he will be coming back in his own solo series as ABC Signature Studios and Hulu are teaming up for two aforementioned Live actions shows.
Gabriel Luna has already confirmed his return. He has got a huge role to play in Terminator: Dark Fate, but after that, he will return as the character that really made him popular. The Ghost Rider series will revolve around Robbie Reyes version brought forward in Agents of SHIELD, but what’s interesting is that we are getting a Helstorm series which will follow Daimon and Ana Helstrom, the children of a “mysterious and powerful serial killer.”
Ghost Rider will be produced by Paul Zbyszewski, Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb and Ingrid Escajeda. Ingrid will also be the showrunner of the series. For Helstorm, Jeph Loeb will be the EP and Paul Zbyszewski will be the showrunner while we get to see Daimon and Ana who “have a complicated dynamic as they track down the worst of humanity—each with their attitude and skills.”
With these two shows we can assume that “the Spirits of Vengeance” are coming, which means that a Blade series could also be on its way as he is a big member of the team. Wesley Snipes has talked about being in talks with Marvel about Blade, and this is probably where he will be introduced as Erik Brooks into the confounds of the MCU.
What’s interesting is that the complete control over Hulu will also allow Disney to bring home The Netflix based Defenders right after the 2 year waiting period of all those characters canceled by Netflix expires. We’d have Defenders, Agents of SHIELD, Runaways and Spirits of Vengeance on TV and the Avengers, Thunderbolts, As Guardians of the Galaxy and probably some more teams on the big screen. So MCU’s future is very bright because Disney has been laying the foundation for something huge!
