Godzilla Slaps Back, MK & More!

A couple of weeks ago…

…we had a little fun (at least I did) with Disney as Godzilla, and Netflix as Kong scoring a couple of body blows with the announcement of a deal between Netflix and Sony to stream their Marvel content, Spiderman included. 

At the time we noted that, despite the upstarts’ victory, we felt said victory might be short lived. 

Well, it was shorter than we thought..

As of Thursday, Sony and Disney have reached a deal to stream all their co-licensed properties on the various Disney platforms, including Disney+, after the Netflix window.

This, on top of their announcement that Black Widow (amongst others) will be launched day and date on Plus Premium and theatrically, means they are continuing to bet big on their already 100M + subscribers, and will move mountains (and spend a ton of money - apparently the Netflix and Disney deals are worth around $3B between them to Sony) to make sure their content is all aggregated in one place. 

Does that mean you’ll be able to see Spiderman et al on Netflix before Disney+? Yes, so that alone won’t entice new users to their platform. However, it does set them up nicely to have total control of the secondary streaming market and, given that the Netflix deal expires in 2026, positions Disney nicely to take over the prime slot shortly thereafter.

ELSEWHERE in the streaming wars, HBO Max continue to make inroads, adding 2.7M subscribers thus far this year for a total of 44.2M. This means their own dual (or should that be duel, given conflicts between theatrical and streaming?) launch plan appears to be working, at least to some degree, especially given Godzilla’s $390M (and counting) box office take. 

Mortal Kombat doesn’t look to make anything like as big a splash, of course, but I am (possibly somewhat foolishly) rather looking forward to it.

And then finally, purely for fun, we had to highlight the new The Boys podcast. The show was probably my favorite thing on TV last year (as Invincible is this year… which probably says something very troubling about me), and the podcast is a great addition for its fanbase.

You can find that HERE:

Join us Sunday night, 5pm Pacific on Clubhouse for a catch up and chat about comics, culture and… Kangaroos? (I ran out of appropriate “C” sounds) by clicking the link HERE.

And, as always

Onward!

Eben, Adam & Ricci

When a supernatural killer stalks the townspeople of Boston, renowned silversmith and monster hunter Paul Revere is called in to fight the evil. While tracking down clues to the killer’s identity, the first shots of the Revolution are fired, and Revere finds himself battling a war on two fronts in a struggle to save his family.