The Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max mega bundle has finally arrived – and I think Netflix should be very worried
It’s been a while, but the Disney Plus, Hulu, and Max bundle we reported on back in May has finally launched. There are two subscription options: an ad-supported tier for $16.99 per month and an ad-free tier for $29.99 per month. As Max points out, that’s a 38% savings over the cost of buying the services separately.
The bundle includes shows and movies from some of the biggest names in entertainment: Disney, of course, but also ABC, CNN, DC, FX, HBO, Marvel, Pixar, Searchlight, Star Wars, Warner Bros. and more. Upcoming new releases you can stream include season four of Only murders in the building and Max’s new Batman spin-off show, The penguin, arriving in August and September respectively.
Of course, you can also stream all of the best Disney Plus movies , best Hulu movies , and best Max movies , as well as each streamer’s catalog of TV shows. As you might expect, there’s a suitably flashy promo video, which I’ve embedded below.
The bundle that takes you back to the future
As we’ve previously reported, this bundle feels a lot like the previous future of TV from the pre-streaming era: cable. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because by bundling services, you get access to a lot more content without having to spend a ton of money on it – provided, of course, that the bundle includes the services you actually want.
In this particular case, the best streaming services bundled together are all known for their quality, and the prices aren’t as high as we might have feared. If you add together the cost of a Disney Plus subscription ($13.99 per month for Premium), a Hulu subscription ($17.99 with no ads), and a Max subscription ($19.99 for Ultimate), you’re coming up with just under $52 per month. So this new bundle is priced pretty aggressively.
The elephant in the room, of course, is Netflix, which for many people is the one subscription service they can’t live without. The streamer has outright said that it won’t participate in money-saving bundles beyond the two it’s already a part of with network providers. As a result, other streamers are finding it difficult to chip away at Netflix’s market share and reduce churn, the point at which subscribers cancel their subscriptions. Bundling has the potential to be a positive for both, so Netflix shouldn’t be surprised if other streamers catch the bundling bug and find itself battling a larger list of rivals already licensing its content.
