You haven’t been able to preorder a Disney Blu Ray from Amazon for well over a year now. Googling only finds stories asking why or are from 2014 or so when this happened once before for a few months. It’s weird that it has lasted this long and that no one is really talking about it in the media. Clearly it is some kind of disagreement but what? The whole thing is strange and also annoying.
No answer, just a guess…
I have read news articles that claim Disney is going to launch their own streaming service to rival Netflix or Amazon prime. Maybe to drive up demand they are drying up the alternatives? Is Disney content still available for streaming on other platforms? I can’t check now because of work.
Previous thread, started by you in fact. We didn’t have any answer or conclusion back then either.
Netflix currently has plenty of Disney content available, both recent and older stuff. Including MCU movies and at least one Star Wars movie.
http://deadline.com/2018/02/disney-streaming-service-kevin-mayer-netflix-hulu-1202287731/
“Mayer said Disney’s new streaming services aren’t envisioned as Netflix killers — even though the studio will stop distributing newly released Disney, Marvel and Pixar films on the rival service in 2019.”
Three weeks ago I could have pte-ordered the Thor: Ragnorok on Amazon. Now there us no Available by date or pre-order option, so it is recent.
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I just checked Target and their site says pre-orders are sold out, so it may not be an Amazon thing.
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Disney has a history of carefully controlling releases and re-releases of old movies. Every once in a while they make something scarce and then a couple years later have it make a blockbuster comeback in a special edition.
That’s the whole “Disney Vault” system. I think the time between home video releases is seven years. Conveniently, that allows a new generation of small children to be targeted.
And I’m not sure a streaming service will fully replace home video releases of their movies, because little kids often want to watch the same movie over and over again.
But the problem as described in the other thread is that new releases from Disney are usually unavailable from Amazon, whereas they’re plentiful at Target, Walmart, Best Buy, etc. It’s not a vault thing.
Thor:Ragnarok gets released on Tuesday, so we can see then what actual availability is.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the case (at least for me), because I’ve been checking. The Digital download is and always has been available but not the Blu Ray. It effects every Disney title so it isn’t availability of Thor specifically. Its definitely some sort of infighting but the exact cause is being kept quiet.
Well, knowing that Disney is picky about how it releases material, it makes perfect sense to me that they also control which retailers they sell through.
Could be that they have a deal with Netflix to not release through Amazon. Just a hypothesis, though.
Sure, they control it, but there has to be a reason beyond they’re “picky” that they’d choose not to release movies through Amazon. That’s what the OP is asking about. Maybe Amazon wants a bigger cut, maybe they discount too much, but there’s got to be a business reason for what they’re doing.