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Disney Might Move Peter Pan, Cruella, And Pinocchio To Disney Plus, Or Not

Disney is said to be mulling its options for where and how to release its movies in the future.

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In response to the ongoing global health crisis from COVID-19, entertainment giant Disney is said to be considering its options for how to move forward with its theatrical releases, and this includes sizing up whether or not to release some of them on Disney Plus.

According to Deadline, Disney is currently considering moving its live-action remakes Cruella, Pinocchio, and Peter Pan and Wendy from theatres to Disney Plus.

No final decisions have been made yet, Deadline pointed out. If the films do move to Disney Plus, it remains to be seen if they would be offered to subscribers at no extra cost as it's doing with the Pixar movie Soul, or if there would be an extra fee like there was for the Mulan remake.

"The studio is looking at every option, and everything is under consideration and contingency planning," Deadline reported.

Shifting these films to Disney Plus could help bolster the service that is already wildly popular. Just a year after it debuted, Disney Plus already has more than 70 million subscribers. It's still well behind Netflix's 195 million members, but Disney Plus is growing faster than Netflix in terms of paying subscribers at this point in its lifecycle.

While shifting Cruella, Pinocchio, and the Peter Pan film to Disney Plus would impact box office revenues, Disney could benefit from more revenue from Disney Plus memberships and a surge in Disney's tock price, Deadline's sources said.

The impact on the in-person moviegoing experience from COVID-19 is a new phenomenon for Disney and other movie giants, and as of yet, there does not appear to be much in the way of consensus regarding best practices for how to move forward when it comes to releasing movies.

Universal's new Trolls film elected to bypass cinemas and release through video-on-demand, and it ended up doing better than the first movie without even releasing in theatres. Christopher Nolan's blockbuster time-bending movie Tenet stuck with its plan to release into a limited movie theatre market, and ended up making more than $350 million, a number that "thrilled" the director.

While Disney may be mulling a change for some of its forthcoming live-action remakes, Deadline's sources said the company has no plans to move Marvel's Black Widow film to the streaming service.

That's an interesting point given that Warner Bros. just recently announced that Wonder Woman 1984 will be available on HBO Max and in theatres this Christmas.

The new Pinocchio movie is directed by Forrest Gump's Robert Zemeckis and it stars Tom Hanks as Geppetto. Cruella, meanwhile, features Emma Stone as Cruella de Vil, while Peter Pan and Wendy features Yara Shahidi as Tinkerbell.

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