Disney+

After years of flooding the platform with mandatory-feeling Marvel and Star Wars spin-offs, Disney pulled back output, folded Hulu's full content library directly into the Disney+ app during 2025, pushed through password-sharing enforcement and price increases, and launched a standalone ESPN streaming app to carry live sports separately — and the streaming division turned profitable along the way, a real reversal from its money-losing early years. Andor's acclaimed second season in 2025 became the clearest proof that the quality-over-quantity shift was a real creative strategy, not just budget discipline.

Our take: Disney+'s biggest problem was never subscriber numbers, it was diluting its two biggest brands into disposable-feeling weekly content, and the current leaner slate — fewer shows, treated as more consequential — is the correct read on what went wrong, even if it took two years of fan fatigue complaints to get there. The Hulu merge-in is the other half of the fix: Disney finally stopped asking subscribers to manage two apps for one bill.

Watch the Marvel and Star Wars release calendars specifically for whether this discipline holds once the platform needs a subscriber boost — the real test of a strategic pivot is whether it survives a quarter with disappointing growth numbers.