Disney recently announced its intent to acquire the remaining one-third of Hulu that it didn’t previously own from Comcast for at least $8.61 billion. This acquisition, which is expected to close sometime in 2024, will give Disney full ownership of Hulu, as Disney already owns two-thirds of Hulu at the time of this recording. In this article, we’re going to speculate as to what kind of future Hulu has and the potential forms Hulu could take down the road by looking at Disney’s streaming offerings outside of the US.

As I mentioned earlier, Disney currently owns two-thirds, or about 67 percent, of Hulu, giving Disney a majority stake in the service. Ever since the Mouse House gained a controlling stake in Hulu back in 2019, Hulu has been operating more and more like a Disney service than ever before, with most of its current original programming coming from Disney-owned studios. You could even describe Hulu as “Disney Plus for adults” and that wouldn’t be too far off from the truth, especially when you look at the release strategies Disney has been employing for Hulu original programming. Let’s take the latest season of Futurama, for example, which is the series’s first season as a Hulu original. It was released in July of 2023 on Hulu in the US, and got day-and-date releases internationally, via Star Plus in Latin America and Disney Plus everywhere else. Other Disney-owned Hulu originals have followed a similar release schedule, having been released on Disney Plus and Star Plus either day-and-date, or shortly after their US premieres. Disney also offers various types of programming from third parties on Hulu, thanks to existing deals those third parties had with Hulu either before or after Disney took a controlling stake in the service.

However, there are some instances where the existence of Hulu has caused problems in terms of Disney’s release schedules when it comes to exclusive programming. Disney has expanded their content offerings with different types of programming to appeal to different audiences. One of which being anime. Disney has acquired exclusive licenses to a few anime in recent years, but the release schedules have been less than stellar here in the US, especially when compared to more established players in the anime space, like Sony’s Crunchyroll and AMC Networks’s Hidive. Let’s take Heavenly Delusion, or its Japanese title, Tengoku Daimakyo, for example. The first episode’s English subbed Hulu release was delayed by a few days after its international release, but after that, the episodes were simultaneously released on Hulu in the US, Star Plus in Latin America, and Disney Plus everywhere else. The English dub of that same anime had a much weirder release schedule, with episodes releasing on Hulu weeks after they have been available on Disney Plus elsewhere. Personally, I do think that if Disney didn’t have to release Heavenly Delusion on two services that were built on different technology stacks, the US probably wouldn’t have gotten the short end of the stick when it came to the release of Heavenly Delusion, but that’s just my opinion and I could be wrong about that. I hope that Disney learns from this experience when releasing its exclusive anime on Hulu in the future. I am willing to give the House of Mouse some slack, given that they’re a newer player in the modern anime distribution space.

Back to the acquisition of Hulu, what does it mean for the future of the service? Well, Disney CEO Bob Iger has said that the company plans to combine Disney Plus and Hulu programming into a single app by the end of 2023, which is right around the corner at the time of this article, so we shouldn’t have to wait too long to see what that will look like, if those plans still hold true. Disney also said that they plan to keep Disney Plus and Hulu as separate services while offering this combined service. Let’s take a look at the forms that the combined service could take.

The first, and probably most likely, form that the combined service could take is the form of a “Hulu” hub within Disney Plus, where Hulu original programming can reside alongside the rest of the content that you would normally find on Disney Plus, similar to the hubs for Marvel or Star Wars. It would be nice if this hypothetical Hulu hub could also include content from other Disney-owned brands, like ABC, FX, Freeform, or 20th Century Studios, and that’s something I could see happening, given that all of that content is owned by the same company that operates Disney Plus. It would also be great if the hypothetical Hulu hub could add some of the third-party content that you can find on Hulu, like some Crunchyroll or Viz Media anime, or some of the more popular series on Hulu that are not owned by Disney, but that seems far less likely, given all of the negotiations that would likely have to take place and contracts that would likely need to be amended in order for that to happen.

The next, and less likely, form this combined service could take is the introduction of the “Star” brand in the US in some way, shape, or form. Outside of the US, the Star brand operates as a catch-all brand for everything that falls outside of the normal family-friendly Disney brand, including Hulu originals, as well as programs from ABC, FX, Freeform, 20th Century Studios, and Searchlight Pictures. In Latin America, Star has its own streaming service, in the form of Star Plus, with all of the types of programs that I just mentioned, including Hulu originals, like Solar Opposites, as well as FX series, like Atlanta and Archer. Star Plus is even the streaming home of 20th Century Studios series like Family Guy, American Dad, How I Met Your Mother, and so on, as well as the anime and international programming that Disney has directly licensed from their original rights holders, like Heavenly Delusion and Summer Time Rendering. Elsewhere, Star exists as a hub within Disney Plus, rather than its own separate streaming service, with all of the types of programming that I mentioned in this section of the article. I don’t think Star will be introduced into the US just yet, but down the road, that seems like more likely. What form a potential US version of Star could take remains to be seen. A US Star could emulate its Latin American counterpart and take the form of a rebranded Hulu, keeping Star Plus and Disney Plus as separate services. A US Star could also take the form of a hub within Disney Plus, as it does outside of the US and Latin America.

With the acquisition of Hulu looming, the future of the service itself is called into question. In the near future and immediately after the acquisition closes, Hulu will most likely continue to exist as it currently does, but with a more limited selection of third-party content, as I expect that companies like Paramount and especially NBC Universal, owned by Comcast, could start to pull their content from Hulu once the House of Mouse gains full control of the service, to prop up their own streaming services, Paramount Plus and Peacock, respectively. There will likely still be some third-party content on Hulu, such as certain programming from Warner Bros. Discovery, which doesn’t seem to want to keep its programming exclusive to its own streaming service, Max (also currently known as HBO Max outside of the US). I also expect the Fox network, which is owned by the Fox Corporation and not Disney, to keep its programming on Hulu for the time being, as Fox renewed their deal with Hulu in 2022 to share its programming with Tubi, the free and ad-supported streaming service owned by the Fox Corporation. Lastly, I expect some third-party anime from distributors such as Viz Media, who doesn’t have its own service, as well as Crunchyroll and Sentai Filmworks, to remain on Hulu, as Disney has recently been advertising Hulu as a premier destination for anime like Dragon Ball, Naruto, and Bleach, with Disney even having the exclusive streaming rights to the original Bleach anime and its sequel, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War.

Looking further into a potential future where more and more third parties start to pull their content from Hulu as a result of the complete ownership from the House of Mouse, I think Disney could update its streaming service strategy to look more like its international counterparts, and that’s where I think the Star brand could come into play. As mentioned earlier in the article, Star already acts as Hulu’s counterpart outside of the US, so it would make sense for Disney to introduce Star into the US, as it would simplify things on both a branding level and a technical level. As far as branding goes, a rebrand from Hulu to Star would make for a more consistent experience worldwide, marking one less brand for Disney to have to maintain, especially for just one country. A Star original could be a Star original everywhere, rather than being a Star original outside the US and a Hulu original inside the US. From a technical standpoint, whether you’re talking about Star Plus in Latin America or the Star hub on Disney Plus everywhere else, both are built from the ground up on the same tech. BAMTech, to be exact, which Disney fully acquired in 2022. If Disney were to successfully transition its Hulu users to a service with BAMTech integrated from the beginning, like a potential US version of Star Plus or a Star hub within the US version of Disney Plus, the House of Mouse could simplify things by greatly reducing, or even eliminating the technical complexities that I think plagued the release of Heavenly Delusion here in the US, which could result in everyone having the same or a similar streaming experience, whether in the US or abroad. 

In fact, we could already be starting to see a future where Disney is transitioning its users off of Hulu. Marvel Studios’s Echo will be releasing simultaneously on Hulu and Disney Plus on January 10th, 2024. However, all five episodes of Echo will be available on Hulu until April 9th, 2024. After which, the series will become exclusive to Disney Plus. It should also be noted that Echo will be the first series produced by Marvel Studios, the studio responsible for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to carry a TV-MA rating in the United States, the most mature rating that a series can have, marking the first Disney Plus original with that rating. The limited Hulu release could be the first sign that Disney is trying to get its US customers used to watching more mature programming on Disney Plus. Since people in the US are used to watching Disney’s more mature programming on Hulu, it makes sense to release Echo on both Hulu and Disney Plus simultaneously. Echo isn’t the first TV-MA series to be released on Disney Plus in the US. That honor goes to Marvel’s former Netflix series, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and The Punisher. Disney Plus also has the first two Deadpool movies, which are rated R in the US, one of the highest ratings a movie can have. The thing that Echo, the former Netflix series, and the Deadpool movies have in common is that they’re all associated with Marvel in some way. Disney has yet to release a mature series or movie that isn’t associated with Marvel on Disney Plus in the US, but if the Disney Plus release of Echo is successful, perhaps it could push the House of Mouse to release its mature, non-Marvel programming on the platform as a way to transition its US customers off of Hulu and onto a BAMTech-based platform, like Disney Plus or whatever the combined service ends up becoming, like a US version of Star.

Of course, most of this is speculation on my part, based on what we know now and what Disney is currently doing outside of the US, so do not take any of this as any sort of confirmation that anything described in this article is going to happen, as I could be wrong about any or all of it. With that said, what do you think the future of Hulu will be once Disney fully acquires it? Do you think Hulu could still exist as it does today or do you think that it could turn into something else? If you live in the US, what do you think of Star? Do you think Disney could launch Star in the US to simplify its streaming offerings worldwide? Let me know in the comments, and be sure to check out Cels & Circuits on social media for more content just like this!