After Christmas, it won’t be Christmas anymore. The contract between Canal+ and Disney which gave access to Disney, Marvel or Pixar content to the channel’s subscribers ends at the end of the year. And it will not be renewed.
“From January 1, 2025, Canal+ customers will no longer be able to watch our new films, nor access Disney+ or our television channels via their subscription,” Disney said.
“However, all of our productions – films, series, documentaries – will remain accessible to all directly on Disney+,” the company underlined. For new releases, however, you will have to wait seventeen months after their theatrical release, by virtue of the media chronology, which is more favorable to Canal+, the biggest financier of French cinema.
Five years of marriage
Five years after their union, the Plus couple separated. Disney+ and Canal+ had indeed made noise at the end of 2019 by announcing an exclusive distribution agreement for the Disney platform, a few months before its launch in France.
This agreement, which expires at the end of December, had two main components: on the one hand, the inclusion of Disney+ in Canal’s offers and, on the other, priority broadcasting of Disney films on Canal+.
On the first, Disney+ has contributed over the last five years to Canal+’s aggregation strategy by integrating some of its offers such as Canal+ Ciné Séries, which also allows access to content from Netflix or Max. Operators such as Orange, SFR, etc. Until now, they also had to go through Canal+ to distribute the platform.
The market has evolved
On the second part, Canal+ was able to take advantage of the first broadcast window (after their VOD release) of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, 20th Century Fox, Blue Sky and Fox Searchlight films.
The third part of the agreement concerned the distribution of the Disney Channel, Disney Junior, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, Voyage and Fox Play.
But, in five years, the market has evolved significantly, particularly with the arrival of new players in the world of streaming, we argue at Disney.
