Disney Plus is officially coming to the UAE this summer
Walt Disney Company's streaming service will launch in 42 countries and 11 new territories
Disney Plus, the streaming service from The Walt Disney Company, has confirmed that it’s finally coming to the Middle East this summer — including the UAE.
It will launch in 42 countries and 11 new territories, read a statement released on January 26, and that includes 16 markets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Apart from the UAE, other MENA countries that will be getting Disney Plus (officially known as Disney+) include Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen.
The streaming site will be the go-to place for fans to access “exclusive original content and thousands of episodes and movies from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and general entertainment from Star,” Disney said in a statement.
Until now, the OSN platform has been the go-to source for Disney Plus shows, including ‘The Mandalorian’, ‘WandaVision’, ‘Loki’ and ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’. However, prior to the announcement, the shows had been removed from the streaming service.
However, the first inclination that Disney Plus was coming to this region emerged last year, when many frustrated fans took to social media to complain that Marvel’s alternate reality animated series ‘What If...?’, which dropped in August, didn’t release in the UAE.
This was followed by the Jeremy Renner-led ‘Hawkeye’ which also didn’t show here.
In an earnings call last year, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek said that Disney Plus’ did confirm that this region was on their horizon, saying that rollouts in certain markets such as Eastern Europe was being pushed from late 2021 to summer 2022. The reasoning for this, he said, is to coincide with the market roll out in “parts of the Middle East and Africa,” Variety reported.
The streaming platform has an envious roster of shows in the works for this year, which includes the release of 'Moon Knight', starring Oscar Isaac that drops on March 30. Other shows in the pipeline include 'She-Hulk', which stars Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk/Jennifer Walters, followed by 'Ms Marvel', which will star Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old Pakistani American from Jersey City.
Not to be left behind are fans of the 'Star Wars' universe who will get a chance to view shows such as 'Obi-Wan Kenobi', with Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor and 'Star Wars: The Bad Batch – Season 2'.