Disney+ to launch Star channel aimed at adults | Disney+

Disney is hoping to pull in more customers to its Disney+ streaming service with the launch of a channel aimed at adults.

The Star channel will debut on Disney’s streaming platform on 23 February with original shows such as Big Sky, from Big Little Lies and Ally McBeal creator David E Kelley, plus films ranging from the Oscar-winning The Favourite to Pretty Woman.

It will also show classic TV series, including Ugly Betty and Family Guy, from Hollywood heavyweights such as Disney Television Studios, 20th Century Studios, 20th Television, ABC and Searchlight Pictures.

The extra content, however, will push up the monthly cost of the service by 33%. New subscribers will pay £7.99 a month, compared with the current price of £5.99. From August all customers, new and existing, will pay the higher price.

In an attempt to protect its reputation as a safe children’s entertainment provider, all Disney+ account holders will be prompted when Star launches to install a two-step parental control system involving age ratings on individual profiles and pin protection. Parents that do not go through the process will find their accounts defaulting to 14+ restrictions.

Disney+ launched last March and has had rapid take-up with 95 million subscribers globally. Its established rival, Netflix, has about 200 million.

Boosted by successes such as The Mandalorian, Disney+ drew the largest proportion of new UK streaming subscribers in 2020 with 38% of the total, while Amazon’s Prime Video took a quarter and Netflix 19%.

Lockdown last year pushed the number of UK streamers up to more than 32 million, with 3.5 million people signing up to Disney+, 12.8 million to Netflix and approximately 11.4 million to Prime Video. However Disney+ has primarily been focused on the children’s market through its five brands – Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic.

The president of The Walt Disney Company in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Jan Koeppen, said Disney+ had “exceeded even our lofty expectations” and that the decision to increase its offering for adults had been taken after talking to subscribers.

He said: “Unsurprisingly, they all said, ‘We love choice’ … The adults among them … said, ‘We’d love to have even more choice’ for what they called ‘me time’, the time when the kids had gone to bed … That’s where Star comes in, a whole new world of TV series and feature films that are geared more towards grown-ups.”

Luke Bradley-Jones, senior vice president of direct-to-consumer and general manager at Disney+ EMEA, acknowledged that some parents might have concerns about more adult content on Disney+. “We want to ensure Disney+ remains a loved and trusted environment for audiences of all ages, which is why we have been working hard on our product roadmap, and we have got some new parental control features that we are introducing, which are very robust and easy to use.”

Bradley-Jones said the controls would sit alongside the existing children’s profiles features and allow customers to set content ratings and control access to the app, and to individual profiles, based on those content ratings.

There will be seven ratings, from zero+ to 18+. The controls will also let customers use a pin “to make sure that other members of the household do not watch what they are not meant to”.

The new service will also feature original localised shows including UK-made ones and European co-productions across drama, comedy and unscripted series. There are no plans for live sport.