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Disney to Exclusively Stream New Series Baymax on Disney Plus

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Walt Disney (DIS - Free Report) recently announced that it would stream Walt Disney Animation Studios’ new series Baymax!, exclusively on Disney+, on Jun 29.

Walt Disney Animation Studios also recently shared a new trailer for this upcoming series. Along with the new trailer, Disney also debuted key art for the Baymax! Series.

Baymax! is a spinoff of the hit animated film Big Hero 6, released in 2014 and continues to depict the adventures of Hiro Hamada, a 14-year-old tech genius and his companion robot, Baymax, in San Fransokyo.

 

Quality Content Offerings To Aid Growth

Disney has been working on providing quality content on all its platforms, considering changing consumer preferences and stakeholders’ expectations of the brand. It has been focused on providing creative and inclusive content across all genres that audiences of all ages can enjoy.

Disney+ emerged as a key growth driver for Disney, primarily driven by its solid content portfolio. The service offers nearly 700 movies and 11,700 episodes of television shows from brands such as Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic and Disney+ originals.

Disney has an impressive line-up of big-budget movies slated to be released over the next couple of years, several of which will appear on Disney+ simultaneously with their theatrical releases.

In the first week of May, the company released Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The movie garnered more than $700 million at the box office despite a significant drop in the second weekend. Also, since Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a Disney-only production, it will hit Disney+ very soon.

Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe’s upcoming 2022 release list includes Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and The Marvels. It also plans to launch a new Marvel series on Disney+ in fiscal 2022.

Moreover, Paramount Global’s (PARA - Free Report) Paramount Pictures, Disney CreativeWorks and Framework Studio have recently partnered to launch a custom spot featuring champion athletes across multiple sports categories to build up anticipation for Paramount’s new film Top Gun: Maverick.

Set to premiere on ESPN, the piece features an encouraging Maverick-inspired speech from Sean McVay, Los Angeles Rams’ Head Coach.

Disney also has an interesting layout of series scheduled to be released on its streaming platform, Disney+.

Disney+ has ordered a fourth season of its very popular original musical series, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. The news has hit the racks just ahead of the release of High School Musical’s third season, all set to premiere on Disney+ on Jul 27.

In addition, the company has recently announced that Zombies 3, the much-anticipated trequel of the Disney Branded Television's popular musical franchise Zombies, will have a global premiere on Jul 15 and will also be streamed exclusively on Disney+.

Due to its robust content portfolio, Disney remains on track to achieve its guidance of 230-260 million paid subscribers by the end of fiscal 2024.

As of Apr 2, 2022, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company had 137.7 million paid subscribers compared with 103.6 million as of Apr 2, 2021.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The rapidly growing subscriber base helps Disney strengthen its position in the increasingly saturated streaming space dominated by the likes of Netflix (NFLX - Free Report) , Apple (AAPL - Free Report) and others.

Notably, Netflix missed its user-base target in the recently concluded first-quarter 2022. Netflix lost 0.20 million paid subscribers globally against the addition of 3.98 million in the year-ago quarter, missing its guidance of 2.5 million paid-subscriber additions. At the end of the first quarter, Netflix had 221.64 million paid subscribers globally, up 5% year over year, missing management’s expectation of 224.34 million.

The downfall in subscribers strongly reflects the growing competition in the addressable market.

Though Apple has not provided AppleTV+ subscriber numbers, it is estimated that the streaming platform, which has been available for almost two years now, will reach nearly 36 million subscribers by the end of 2026. As per a 9to5Mac report, AppleTV has a 3% market share compared to other streaming devices, and the share percentage is most likely to grow in the long term, given the popularity of its original content that includes Ted Lasso, Shining Girls, Severance and The Essex Serpent, among others.

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