Your Urgent Questions About Hulu on Disney+, Answered

Like Thanos’s conquest in Avengers: Infinity War, it looked inevitable that Disney would take over Hulu, and after months of buildup, the day has come: Everyone can now use Hulu on Disney+ as a so-called “one-app experience.” It was made official in early November 2023 that the Walt Disney Company would pay up for Comcast’s stake in Hulu for the hefty price tag of $8.6 billion, at least. And before that news, Disney rolled out a brand-new dual bundle of Hulu and Disney+ that paved the road for the upcoming “one-app experience” Iger’s teased. In December, a beta launched, teasing the functionality and corporate synergy to come. Throughout this process, Iger was sure to clarify that Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ wouldn’t actually be going away. But if all this consolidation and app wrangling has you scratching your head, we’ve done our best to answer a few basic questions about what to expect from Disney’s streaming services moving forward.

What’s happening with Hulu and Disney+?

Disney is finally making it possible for consumers who subscribe to both Disney+ and Hulu to watch (almost) all content from both platforms in one place: Disney+. This so-called “one-app experience” combining Disney+ and Hulu has been in the works for more than a year; a beta of this service, Hulu on Disney+, rolled out in early December. Basically, if you pay for both Hulu and Disney+ — either individually or via a Disney Bundle — you will now see almost all Hulu content in the Disney+ app. Don’t worry, though: If Marvel or Star Wars isn’t your cup of tea, you can still choose to pay only for Hulu. And even if you do pay for both, you can still just watch Hulu shows in the Hulu app and Disney+ shows on Disney+. Worth noting, though: Disney has started to do more and more dual premieres, meaning shows like Goosebumps and Marvel’s series Echo have debuted their new seasons on both services. And of course, since things are changing quickly in streamland, who knows what Disney will decide to do in a year or two.

What’s this Hulu on Disney+ thing like?

We tested and reviewed the beta a bit. It’s essentially what Iger has teased before: a roll-up of the existing Duo Basic plan of the Disney Bundle, which includes Disney+ and Hulu, onto the Disney+ app. It’s also evolved since it was a beta. It now has a new color vaguely reminiscent of a swampy teal that the Disney marketing is calling “Aurora,” after the northern lights and the well-rested lead of Sleeping Beauty. Also, on the newly updated app, subscribers to both Hulu and Disney+ can expect to see Hulu titles mixed into the main Disney+ homepage. And rather than make users toggle between apps, the rest of Hulu’s content is found within as a tile option on the Disney+ homepage. (In more ways than one, blueish colorimetry included, it’s a lot like what Max did to HBO Max in 2023.)

Are Disney+ or Hulu going away?

Iger has touted a “one-app experience” enough times to maybe give you pause, but currently, the company has no plans to get rid of either of their two streaming services. As our colleague Joe Adalian wrote when he played with the beta, it’s actually “very much not a merger of Disney+ and Hulu: If you like your Hulu app, you can keep your Hulu app.” Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ will all continue to be their own stand-alone services, though the former two will definitely start to have more overlap in terms of shows and movies available in their libraries. And the “one-app experience” likely won’t be a total combination of the two, so, no Dislu+.

Do I have to download a new app?

No. This change has already manifested as an updated version of the current Disney+ app, down to the revised color of the Disney+ app. No new downloads!

How much will this new version of the app cost?

So far, it still costs the same as the pre-existing pricing of the Disney Duo Bundles — which offers Disney+ and Hulu together without ESPN+. The “Duo Premium” bundle is currently priced at $19.99/month and the ad-supported Duo bundle is $9.99/month. If you don’t already have the Hulu and Disney+ bundle, the app will encourage Disney+ users to subscribe for $2/month more with a big “upgrade” button on Hulu content. It’s always possible that Disney could discount the revised app somehow, to juice new sign-ups, but at this point? Not likely.

What about ESPN+? Will that be in there?

No. ESPN+ will remain a separate entity, as far as we know. Separately, a new sports streaming mega app jointly owned by Disney, Fox Corporation, and Warner Bros. Discovery is rolling out in 2024, and Disney’s standalone ESPN flagship app is on deck for 2025. “Disney is going to start integrating ESPN content into some of its international versions of Disney+ this summer, however, so it sure seems possible that at some point, there might be an option to stream at least some ESPN or ESPN+ programming within D+. But for the moment, ESPN+ is staying right where it is.

Why is Disney doing this?

The answer is always money! As competitors like Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery also know, streaming empires are expensive to build and maintain — and the businesses are not yet profitable. (Disney’s streaming business reported a loss of $387 million in the third quarter of 2023, a number that fell to $138 million in Q4, though Iger has said streaming would be profitable by fall 2024.) Iger’s mandate when he returned to replace the last Bob as CEO was to turn the ship around. (As part of that strategy, Disney laid off around 7,000 workers last year, and Iger managed to make himself a Hollywood villain during the writer and actor strikes.) He and his lieutenants have concluded a single app is the path forward: “We think that by making it available as a one-app experience it will increase engagement and increase our opportunity in terms of serving digital ads and growing our advertising business,” he said, also noting viewers wouldn’t have to toggle between apps. The advertiser piece of it is huge; Disney+ followed its competitors in offering ads in late 2022, and a larger, broader single product gives Disney a lot more flexibility on the ad market.

Iger also pointed out that the company has already had some prior success managing a broad, general-interest streaming app, versus a trio of apps geared toward family entertainment, general programming, and sports. “Outside the United States, we created that with Star,” he said. “It’s working quite well, and it’s one of the reasons why we are going to launch that as an advertiser-supported platform.”

All of this does sound very Max. Is it related to the company pulling stuff off Disney+ in 2023?

Uh, yes, in the sense that the answer to this question is also still money. As Disney’s CFO, Christine McCarthy, said in mid-2023, on the company’s second-quarter earnings call: “We will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion.” (An “impairment charge” basically means a loss in value of a certain asset.) By its third-quarter call, Disney reported it had taken $1.02 billion in restructuring and impairment charges.

This post has been updated with new details throughout.