Unlike Netflix and other streaming platforms, Disney Plus doesn’t announce ahead of time when certain titles will be leaving its service, so fans have to keep on their toes when it comes to checking which movies are still available and which aren’t. This October 1st, for example, saw an acclaimed Hugh Jackman film being quietly removed from D+’s library in the US.
As per What’s On Disney Plus, 2016’s sports biopic Eddie the Eagle has left Disney Plus. It’s pretty common for 20th Century Fox productions to disappear from the Mouse House’s platform due to pre-existing licensing agreements that were made prior to the Disney takeover, but they always find their way back to D+ eventually. At this point, though, we don’t know how long this one will be away for before it comes back home.
Eddie the Eagle is a feel-good underdog story about Michael Edwards, a British ski-jumper who became the first competitor to represent Great Britain at the sport for 60 years at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. Taron Egerton plays Edwards, who became known in the press as “Eddie the Eagle”, even though he had no serious chance of winning a medal. Hugh Jackman co-stars as Bronson Peary, Eddie’s jaded American trainer who rediscovers his love of the sport through Eddie’s unwavering optimism.
Though it was a huge flop at the box office, not even making back double its slim $23 million budget, Eddie the Eagle proved to be a critical success. On Rotten Tomatoes, it sports a strong 82%, with the critical consensus noting that the film’s “amiable sweetness can’t disguise its story’s many inspirational clichés,” but admitting that “for many viewers, it will be more than enough to make up for them.”
Egerton went on to re-team with director Dexter Fletcher for 2019’s much more successful Rocketman. Likewise, Egerton and Jackman’s partnership in Eddie the Eagle inspired a fan movement to get Marvel to cast him as the next Wolverine.
For everything coming to Disney Plus this October, visit here.