Disney+, Disney’s upcoming streaming service, will have almost everything: all of its animated movies, 10,000 Star Wars spinoff shows, most of the Marvel Universe (minus Spider-Man), possibly The Simpsons, and a Muppets short-form series. What it will not have: sex, big swears, my money.
Entertainment writer Eric Vespe attended Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, California this weekend and asked a rep whether the streaming service, set to debut in November, will offer any R-rated content. The answer is nope!
This is not actually new news—in 2018, the New York Times reported that the service wouldn’t stream R-rated films in an effort to gear itself toward families. Disney is also notoriously clean and squeaky, so much so that you can’t drink alcohol inside Disneyland (though you can get very drunk at California Adventure and then ride the Little Mermaid ride 15 times in a row, not that I know from experience!). Not to mention the fact that the new Star Wars series is about as sexy as a fly fishing convention, a frustrating outcome considering the original series served as so many people’s sexual awakening, between Han Solo and Princess Leia and Admiral Ackbar, who never gets enough credit.
Still, it’s annoying that Disney+ is so hellbent on puritanism, if just because it serves as a reminder that in the future we’ll have to subscribe to five squillion different streaming services to have the same access to the wide breadth of film and television we have now. Netflix is losing its Disney catalog to Disney+, which means parents who want their kids to be able to watch Frozen but would also like access to grown-up stuff will need to subscribe to both streaming services, and/or pony up for Amazon, Hulu, HBO Max, etc., plus Miss Piggy will never get it in now. I guess this is the world we live in, but I don’t have to like it.