Disney+ Launches Hulu Hub in Bid to Boost In-House Bundle

Alex Weprin
·3 min read
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Only Murders in the Building and The Bear, meet The Mandalorian and Loki.

Hulu content is now available on Disney+, with the company officially adding a Hulu tile to its homepage Wednesday, placing it alongside brands like Marvel, Pixar, Disney and Star Wars.

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The tile will be available to anyone with both a Disney+ and a Hulu subscription, and clicking through will take them to a Hulu content hub, featuring most of Hulu’s original and acquired TV series and movies.

Subscribers to both services will see the Hulu tile automatically (assuming they signed up with the same email), with no other process required to get the Hulu content. Notably, Disney will automatically factor in whether users are subscribers to the advertising-supported tiers or ad-free tiers. In other words, if a user subscribes to Disney+’s ad-free tier but doesn’t pay premium for Hulu’s ad-free tier, the Disney+ shows will be ad-free, while the Hulu shows will include ads.

Disney notes that Wednesday’s launch is still a beta mode, and while it will include a Hulu tile, a Hulu hub and enhanced parental controls, the official launch is slated for March 2024. That will see Hulu content added to the Disney+ homepage, automated recommendations, and to sets and collections. It will also see Disney market bundles directly in the service and add more promotion of Hulu content within Disney+.

The company is not expected to do much marketing for the beta, instead waiting until the spring for the full rollout.

The combining of Hulu and Disney+ content will also enhance some existing libraries. Disney+ is the streaming home for past seasons of The Simpsons, while Hulu has rights to the current or latest season. Subscribers to both services will now get all the episodes in one place.

Disney also released a video outlining the parental controls available, noting that users can decide what level of content is appropriate for their kids profiles and create a PIN code to limit access.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said back in May that Disney+ and Hulu would be combined into one app, arguing that it would “provide greater opportunities for advertisers, while giving bundle subscribers access to more robust and streamlined content, resulting in greater audience engagement and ultimately leading to a more unified streaming experience.”

The combination of the services also comes as Disney has taken full control of Hulu in a multibillion-dollar deal with Comcast. Disney paid Comcast $8.6 billion last week to acquire the NBCUniversal owner’s 33 percent stake in Hulu (“the check cleared, it’s in the accounts,” Comcast president Mike Cavanagh said at a UBS conference earlier this week). The two companies are now going through a process to determine Hulu’s value, which will likely see Disney pay billions more.

Disney and Hulu remain separate services, of course, and users can subscribe to one or both.

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