It's taken a while, but the Disney Plus, Hulu and Max bundle we reported on back in May has finally launched. There are two subscription options: an ad-supported tier at $16.99 per month and an ad-free tier at $29.99 per month. As Max points out, that represents a saving of 38% on the cost of buying the services separately.
The bundle includes shows and movies from some of the biggest names in entertainment: Disney, of course, but also ABC, CNN, DC, FX, HBO, Marvel, Pixar, Searchlight, Star Wars, Warner Bros. and more. Imminent new releases that you'll be able to stream include season four of Only Murders in the Building and Max's new Batman spin-off show, The Penguin, which arrives in August and September, respectively.
Of course, you'll also be able to also stream all the best Disney Plus movies, best Hulu movies and best Max movies as well as each streamer's catalog of TV shows. As you'd expect, there's a suitably snazzy promo video, which I've embedded below.
The bundle that takes you back to the future
As we previously reported, this bundle looks very much like the previous future of TV from the pre-streaming days: cable. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, because by bundling services together you get access to much more content without having to spend eye-watering sums of money – provided, of course, that the bundle contains services that you actually want.
In this particular case, the best streaming services being bundled together are all known for their quality, and the prices aren't as high as we might have feared. When you add together the cost of a Disney Plus subscription ($13.99 per month for Premium), a Hulu subscription ($17.99 without ads) and a Max subscription ($19.99 for Ultimate), you're looking at just shy of $52 per month. So this new bundle is priced pretty aggressively.
The elephant in the room here is of course Netflix, which for many people is the one subscription service they can't do without. The streamer has outright said that it won't take part in any cash-saving bundles outside of two it's already apart of with network providers. As a result, other streamers are finding it hard to dent Netflix's market share and to reduce churn, which is when subscribers cancel their subs. Bundling can potentially have a positive effect on both, so Netflix shouldn't be surprised when other streamers get the bundling bug too and it's up against a bigger list of rivals that have licensed its content already.
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