Disney confirms $29.99 fee is for permanent Mulan access, no plans to debut Black Widow on streaming

Still deciding about whether or not you'll pay to see Mulan on Disney+ next month? If you're still on the fence, it might be helpful to know that the premium $29.99 fee apparently won't net you a rental period with an expiration date; rather, it will result in you permanently owning the live-action remake. However, you'll need to be a subscriber of the family-friendly platform in order to gain access to the feature.

CNN confirmed the $29.99 purchase price isn't a limited rental, but will instead permanently unlock Mulan within the user's Disney+ account. So it seems that so long as a user maintains their Disney+ access, the Mulan access will also be there indefinitely. So if the kids want to rewatch it a million times (and you know they will), it won't require a second (or third, or fourth) rental fee.

"As you know it’s fairly expensive to produce for consumers the quality we’re known for," Disney CEO Bob Chapek said (via Deadline). "Rather than simply rolling [the movie] into a free offering, we thought we can test anything when you have your own platform. We’re trying to establish a new premiere access window to capture that investment we got [in the film]. We’ll have a chance to learn from this. From our research under a premiere access offering, not only does it get us revenue from our original transaction of PVOD, but it’s a fairly large stimulus to sign up for Disney+."

Chapek described this unconventional move as "a one-off as opposed to trying to say that there’s a new business windowing model," writes Deadline. As such, Natasha Romanoff fans shouldn't expect to see Cate Shortland's Black Widow hit Disney+ anytime soon. The MCU flick was supposed to open in early May, but was eventually pushed to Friday, Nov. 6. There's no way of telling whether theaters will be open by then, but if the shutdown continues, the Mouse House may decide to make history with the first-ever streaming premiere of a feature-length Marvel Studios project.

Directed by Niki Caro (McFarland, USA), Mulan was originally slated to open in theaters at the end of March, something that was made impossible by the shuttering of movie theaters caused by the COVID-19 health crisis. The film was delayed to July and then August before it was removed from the schedule entirely. While it won't see a theatrical rollout in the U.S., the remake will play in countries/markets where theaters are open, CNN confirmed. Liu Yifei stars as the eponymous heroine, who pretends to be a man in order to take her father's place in the Imperial Chinese Army.

Taking place between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, Black Widow explores the mysterious past of the Russian-trained killer played by Scarlett Johansson. Florence Pugh, David Harbour, and Rachel Weisz co-star as members of Natasha's surrogate family.