When the Walt Disney Company purchased 20th Century Fox, one of the key assets was access to the Indian streaming service “Hotstar”, which was rebranded to Disney+ Hotstar early last year.
Subscribers to Disney+ Hotstar make up over a third of the total number of subscribers to Disney+ globally.
Earlier today, Disney announced some changes to its Disney+ Hotstar service, merging together the VIP and Premium content, while offering three price tiers, depending on if the subscriber is only watching on a mobile device or on multiple devices like 4K TVs.
Disney+ Hotstar has a wide selection of original content, which is currently only available in India, but that is likely to change in the future, with some of the best original content available on Hulu in the United States or on Star On Disney+ internationally.
During an interview with Variety, Sunil Rayan, president and head of Disney Plus Hotstar, has confirmed.
“It is an objective for us that we want creators out of India to have a global platform. Because if we feel like we can provide a global platform, more creators will actually come to us and we want to see more Indian creators be accessible throughout the globe,” Some of the Hotstar Specials are already available on Hotstar in other countries such as the US, Canada and the UK. Netflix has had lots of success in releasing Indian content globally, and releasing Disney+ Hotstar originals on a bigger platform, would make these shows accessible to more viewers.
Disney is now making original content for Disney+ in a number of different countries around the world, including in Latin America, South Korea and across Europe, so it makes sense to use their main streaming platforms to distribute content globally. Especially considering Amazon and Netflix have also been heavily investing in making original Indian content for their streaming services, it would make sense for Disney to follow suit.
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