Everyone’s spent so long talking about the superhero bubble getting ready to burst that nobody seemed to be paying attention to what was going on in streaming, but Disney Plus has shaken the cobwebs off that particular conversation by embarking on a ruthless purge of content that aired on both the company’s in-house platform and Hulu.
It says a lot about how much money is being needlessly wasted in the on-demand world when the Mouse House can happily wipe well upwards of 50 movies and TV shows from the content library without even batting an eyelid, never mind Netflix’s rampant cancellation of high-profile originals, HBO Max’s need to shave billions of the budget, and The CW threatening to kill off the Arrowverse for good because it doesn’t own the streaming rights to the franchise’s biggest shows.
Having already caused an uproar by casting Willow into the abyss, Disney is back at it again in double-quick time after confirming that even more titles are set to be removed, and there’s more than one page being taken out of the Netflix playbook. Two of the most notable incoming departures are R-rated fairytale The Princess – which has already threatened to become a cult classic – and the $125 million literary adaptation Artemis Fowl.
The latter was directed by Academy Award winner Kenneth Branagh and boasted such esteemed names as Judi Dench and Colin Farrell among its ensemble, but it’s also one of the worst blockbusters nobody remembers that was pulled from theaters, wound up netting an eight percent Rotten Tomatoes score, and didn’t even make a splash in terms of viewership numbers.
It’s not exactly going to be missed, then, but if Disney is happy to flush a nine-figure investment down the toilet less than three years after its release, then what could possibly be next?