The Walt Disney Company just announced that its streaming service Disney+ has more than 50 million subscribers.The service launched less than five months ago, and apparently had 28.6 million subscribers as of February 3.These &paid subscriber& numbers include subscribers who are bringing in revenue for Disney but are not paying for the service themselves.
(TechCrunch parent company Verizon is offering a year of free Disney+ to some customers.) It also includes 8 million subscribers in India, where Disney+ launched last week as part of Hotstar, a popular streaming service that Disney owns thanks to the acquisition of Fox.While Disney has been relatively slow to release scripted streaming originalsafter the initial splash of &The Mandalorian,& it has been bringing its films like &Frozen 2,& &Onward& and the upcoming &Artemis Fowl& to the service at an accelerated pace, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting theatrical closures.The service has also been expanding internationally, launching in eight Western European countries — the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Switzerland — in the past two weeks.&We&re truly humbled that Disney+ is resonating with millions around the globe, and believe this bodes well for our continued expansion throughout Western Europe and into Japan and all of Latin America later this year,& said Kevin Mayer, the chairman of Disney direct-to-consumer and international business, in a statement.In its latest earnings report, Netflix (which is far more global than Disney+ right now) said it has 167 million paid memberships worldwide.‘Artemis Fowl& is skipping theaters for Disney+