It’s been a rough ride for Disney over the last couple of years, with the Mouse House suffering through a succession of substantial box office bombs and episodic failures that have seen belts tightened like never before across film, television, and streaming.
The likes of Strange World, Lightyear, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Haunted Mansion to name but four high-profile flops have conspired to lose the company hundreds of millions of dollars, and the decision to savagely remove content from its on-demand platform without a care in the world has angered creatives, customers, and audiences alike.
One of the most notable was Willow, the sequel series decades in the making that premiered to solid reviews in November of 2022 and sought to thread the needle between tapping into the nostalgia crowd while also drawing in a brand new one. We didn’t have an inkling if it worked or not, until it was shockingly confirmed just six months after its premiere that the show was being booted from Disney Plus.
As things stand, Willow can’t be watched anywhere on any streaming service, digital library, disc, or subscription-based outlet at all, which becomes even more damning when a recent report by Forbes revealed the eight-episode adventure came carrying a budget of $106 million.
That’s a huge investment on something that’s now been completely wiped off the face of the planet less than half a year after it initially arrived to much fanfare, and a signifier of just how wasteful the kingdom that Walt built has been with its financial muscle.