By the numbers: How the Disney+ lineup stacks up to Netflix, more

The number of movies and shows you’ll be able to stream when Disney+ launches this year reportedly will be Ant-Man tiny when stacked against the enormous libraries of Netflix, Amazon, and even Hulu. But Disney is evidently counting on fans’ faith in the boutique quality of all those huge brand names — names that’ll soon be exclusives on its new platform. 

A bargain price coupled with premium titles from Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and more are aimed at making Disney+ a must-have service, despite the fact it’ll debut with vastly fewer titles overall than Netflix and other streaming rivals. According to a new survey from Ampere Analysis (via Variety), Disney+ will offer fewer than one-fifth of the TV and movie choices offered by Netflix, and will have fewer TV offerings than even CBS All Access. 

That same analysis, though, compared user opinion of the various big-name content providers, and found that Disney+ already enjoys top-shelf prestige with viewers — even though it still won’t be launching for another six months. Among the big streaming players, only HBO edges out Disney when it comes to having a reputation for quality, according to the report.


What kind of numbers are we talking about? In year one, Disney+ will offer 500 movies and 7,500 episodes of television from its present and past library. Compare that with Netflix, which boasts a reported 47,000 TV episodes and 4,000 movies; or with Amazon, which has a huge movie library of more than 12,000 titles. In terms of size, the debut TV lineup for Disney+ will be outstripped by all of the major services, as well as some not-so-major ones, like Starz Play. 

While Disney+ will likely never aspire to swell its library to vast, Netflix-like proportions, its numbers will get larger. “By fiscal year 2024, the company projects that Disney+ will encompass over 120 recent movie releases and more than 500 library films; over 10,000 TV episodes; and more than 50 original series and 10 original films and specials,” the report notes.

At launch, Disney+ will be the exclusive home to all kinds of goodies both brand-new and familiar: The Simpsons, animated Disney and Pixar movies from the Disney vault, on-brand movies from the 20th Century Fox catalog, Marvel movies and original TV shows like Falcon and Winter Soldier and the strangely-named WandaVision, Star Wars movies and original shows like The Mandalorian and The Clone Wars, and tons more.

With few exceptions, all that content — including post-theatrical Marvel releases like Captain Marvel and the upcoming Endgame — will be available to stream at Disney+ and nowhere else. 

Perhaps the most significant number of all, especially considering the star power of what’s on offer, is the price tag. Disney+ will launch with an accessible monthly fee of just $6.99, with a reported goal of hitting a subscriber window of 60 million to 90 million viewers within its first five years. It’s the kind of price that’s cheap enough not to force a decision, for many viewers, about whether to drop a current subscription to Netflix or another service in order to justify the cost of getting on board. 

Small library or not, it’s all coming on Nov. 12. Will you be signing up for Disney+? More interestingly, will you switch up your current streaming smorgasbord just so Disney+ can be your guest? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on Disney’s faith in the quality-over-quantity approach.