Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed plans to begin rolling out the merged app next month during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

Image via Disney

The Big Picture

Disney will soon launch a beta version of its merged Disney+ and Hulu app, aimed at creating a unified experience for Bundle subscribers. The merger aims to make life easier for subscribers and increase ad revenue for Disney, while also offering discounted subscription plans. The beta will allow users to set up their accounts and parental controls ahead of the full launch, expected in Spring 2024.

Disney previously promised that by the end of the year, it would offer a merged app that would combine the content from both Disney+ and Hulu under a single experience. Now, that’s finally becoming a reality as CEO Bob Iger revealed during the House of Mouse’s September quarter earnings call that a beta will begin next month to test out the app ahead of a wider public release. The announcement comes in the wake of Disney’s decision to finally buy out Comcast’s stake in Hulu for at least $8.61 billion pending assessments of the platform’s value.

According to what Iger said at the time, the merger wouldn’t be as extensive as consolidating everything under one platform, but it was advertised as a way to make life a little easier for subscribers to both Disney+ and Hulu. The Mouse House would stand to benefit in terms of ad revenue as well under the new arrangement. It’s certainly no detriment that Disney also recently restructured their subscription plans which offer memberships for both streamers at a deeply discounted rate of $9.99 per month or $19.99 per month without ads if customers decide to pay for a bundle.

Although Disney hasn’t offered an update on the merged app experience until now, Iger assured investors during the call “We remain on track to roll out a unified one-app experience domestically.” He hopes the beta will give users the time to set up their accounts along with any parental controls ahead of the full launch, which is currently expected to come in Spring 2024. In the long run, the goal is to reduce churn and increase engagement with the new app, though it does come at a cost. In preparation for the merge, the company purged several shows from both platforms including expensive and highly-touted originals like Willow.

Disney+ Saw Gains During the Fourth Quarter as Losses Keep Shrinking
Image by Annamaria Ward

In all, it was a positive quarter for the Mouse House as its overall losses once again continued to improve. During the Q3 earnings call, Disney reported a much-improved $512 million USD in streaming losses which further fell to only $387 million USD in its Q4 report. It marks a year-over-year improvement of 74% from Q4 2022 which saw the company bleed $1.4 billion. Not to mention, Disney+ gained a net of around 4 million subscribers to reach 150.2 million. That was powered by a 6.9 million increase in core Disney+ subscribers, which bounced back to 112.6 million after last quarter saw major losses from Disney+ Hotstar. With Disney also planning to follow in Netflix’s controversial footsteps and implement a password-sharing crackdown, Iger hopes that streaming profitability will be a reality by this time next year.

Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the merged Disney+ and Hulu app as the beta rolls out this December in the U.S. for Bundle subscribers.