With the Disney+ streaming service set to launch later this year, the days of Marvel and Star Wars movies and other Disney-owned content on Netflix seem numbered.
But while Disney+ is being billed as the new streaming home for everything under Disney's corporate umbrella, several high-profile Disney films could be returning to Netflix in the relatively near future.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, every Disney movie released between 2016 and 2018 could return to Netflix around 2026 under Disney's current deal with the streaming giant. Furthermore, the report suggests that these films would then become Netflix exclusives.
If the details of that report are true, Disney+ could lose a sizeable chunk of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Netflix in less than a decade. The list of potentially affected Marvel films that were released in the potentially affected window includes fan-favorites like Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War. Likewise, Disney+ could lose access to almost all of the modern Star Wars movies, which began with 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
While it's not clear how this would affect films released before that time frame, later films like Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, would be unaffected by the deal and would remain on Disney+, which would leave both streaming services with incomplete libraries.
While Disney might be focused on its streaming efforts now, the Bloomberg report posits that Disney, and other media giants, weren't necessarily focused on streaming when these deals were signed years ago.
Although the report's claims can't be verified and should be taken with a grain of salt for the moment, these kinds of conflicts over content will likely become more prevalent in the coming years as Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, and a myriad of other streaming services vie for consumers' subscriptions in the increasingly crowded streaming field.