Disney Chief Bob Chapek Sees Clear Path For Hulu To Merge With Disney+ Once Comcast Buyout Is Complete

deadline.com:

Disney CEO Bob Chapek, coming off a promotional blitz at the company’s D23 conference last weekend, reiterated many of those messages for a Wall Street audience but struck a more confident tone than ever before in outlining the future of Hulu.Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech Conference, Chapek noted that while Hulu has been operated by Disney since 2019, a full streaming combo would need to wait due to Comcast’s financial stake.

Under the terms of a deal reached by the companies when Disney acquired most of 21st Century Fox, Disney can buy out Comcast at the start of 2024.

Chapek said he would be glad to execute the buyout sooner, but he indicated Comcast is not in a hurry. Recent estimates have estimated the valuation of the stake at $27.5 billion and that number is not likely to decline during an era when streaming assets continue to be prized.“The thing that you worry about when you’re Disney is brand friction, with some of the content that we may have in general entertainment,” Chapek said. “I am amazed every day in this job how elastic the Disney brand is.

I would tell you that we have had no blowback whatsoever in terms of including that general entertainment content on a Disney-branded streaming proposition” in territories outside of the U.S. “I’m not saying it would be received exactly like that in the U.S., but it gives us some reason to believe that we have more degrees of freedom than anybody would have ever suspected.”A blending of the two services has been expected by many insiders and industry observers, and it would match the strategies afoot at Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global and other companies as the market matures.