First Disney+ Purge Casualties

Next week Disney+ will start purging the platform of dozens of series, including Willow, Turner & Hooch and The Mysterious Benedict Society, Deadline reports.

Disney is the latest media company to purge content from its streaming platforms as the industry is rethinking costs and strategy in that arena with a renewed focus on profits. Warner Bros. Discovery removed a slew of series from HBO Max, with AMC and Showtime also undergoing a similar scale back.

This follows an earnings call in which Disney’s chief financial officer Christine McCarthy said: “We are in the process of reviewing the content on our (direct-to-consumer) services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation.

“Going forward, we intend to produce lower volumes of content in alignment with this strategic shift.”

Deadline lists the following among the first casualties of the May 26 cull:

• The Mysterious Benedict Society
• Big Shot
• Turner & Hooch
• Willow 
• The Making of Willow 
• Just Beyond 
• The World According to Jeff Goldblum
• Pistol 
• Dollface 
• The Quest 
• The Hot Zone 
• Y: The Last Man
• Maggie 
• Little Demon 
• The Premise 
• Love in the Time of Corona
• Everything’s Trash 
• Best in Snow 
• Best in Dough 
• The One and Only Ivan
• Timmy Failure 
• Be Our Chef 
• Magic Camp 
• Howard 
• Earth to Ned
• Foodtastic 
• Stuntman 
• Disney Fairy Tale Weddings 
• Wolfgang 
• It’s a Dog’s Life With Bill Farmer 

Meanwhile, one of the series that AMC+ scrapped, 61st Street, has resurfaced as an acquisition for The CW in the US.