Disney is increasingly turning to YouTubers and social media personalities to fill Disney+ as the company moves beyond its reliance on expensive in-house productions.
The company has entered into a content partnership with Dhar Mann Studios, the digital media company behind YouTube’s enormously popular short-form morality plays. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the agreement begins with an order for 20 original episodes aimed at children, teenagers, and families.
Disney has not revealed the episodes’ format, length, budget, or release date. However, Dhar Mann Studios CEO Sean Atkins said the partnership brings together two companies with different approaches to family entertainment.
Dhar Mann – Dhar Mann Studios, YouTube
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In a joint statement, Asad Ayaz, chief marketing and brand officer of The Walt Disney Company, and Debra OConnell, chairman of Disney Entertainment Television, praised Mann’s distinctive voice and enormous global following.
“Dhar has built a distinctive voice and an enormous global following, with stories that are uniquely his own,” they wrote. They also highlighted the strong connection that Mann and his team have established with their online audience, adding that their “optimistic, deeply relatable storytelling will connect in a meaningful way with Disney fans.”
Dhar Mann’s primary YouTube channel has nearly 28 million subscribers. Its melodramatic, roughly half-hour videos generally feature characters learning blunt moral lessons after bullying, deceiving, or otherwise mistreating people.
Disney Embraces Creator Content
The deal is only the latest sign that Disney sees online creators as an increasingly important source of inexpensive programming.
Earlier this month, Twitch streamer Emily Zhang received a 15-episode series on Disney+ and Hulu. ExtraEmily Creator Essentials repackages footage from her existing livestreams and vlogs into approximately 22-minute episodes.
ExtraEmily – extra emily, YouTube
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Rather than financing an original production, Disney acquired content that Zhang had already created for Twitch and other online platforms. The arrangement gave the company an entire season of programming while presumably limiting its financial exposure.
Disney also recently announced a partnership with TikTok that will bring fan-made vertical videos to Disney+. Participating creators will receive access to official assets from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and Disney Animation, while selected videos will appear in the streaming service’s Verts feed.
Disney’s Expensive Originals Struggle
The strategy represents a dramatic departure from the original promise of Disney+. When the platform launched in 2019, it was promoted as the exclusive home of lavish productions connected to some of entertainment’s most valuable franchises.
Those projects frequently carried theatrical-sized budgets without delivering comparable returns. The Acolyte, for example, reportedly cost approximately $230 million before Disney canceled the Star Wars series after one season. Willow reportedly cost more than $130 million, only to be canceled and removed from Disney+.
(L-R): Osha Aniseya (Amandla Stenberg) and the Stranger in Lucasfilm’s THE ACOLYTE, season one, exclusively on Disney+. ©.
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Meanwhile, Bluey—which Disney licenses from the BBC—consistently outperforms the company’s original Disney+ content. Earlier this summer, Variety compiled Nielsen viewership data across streaming, broadcast, and cable television. No Disney streaming shows made the top 10, despite the company’s major investments in brands like Marvel and Star Wars.
YouTubers Offer Disney a Cheaper Alternative
Following the box office success of this summer’s Obsession and Backrooms, both of which came from YouTube creators, Hollywood is increasingly turning to social media for new voices. Now, Disney appears to be taking a similar approach to streaming.
Creator partnerships offer a less financially risky alternative to producing big-budget content. YouTubers arrive with established audiences, proven formats, and enormous libraries of material that can be adapted without constructing costly sets or hiring major Hollywood stars.
Whether subscribers will consider that material worthy of a premium streaming service is another question. Disney+ was built by spending billions of dollars on professionally produced entertainment. Its future may increasingly depend on convincing customers to pay for content resembling what they can already watch for free on YouTube and TikTok.
What do you think of Disney+ turning to YouTubers for content? Sound off and let us know!
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