Disney Shuts Down Hulu App
Bad news for Hulu fans: Disney plans to shut down your app.
The company made the announcement Wednesday during its quarterly earnings call, Variety reports . The plan? Fully integrate Hulu’s capabilities into the Disney+ app. Why have two apps when you can have one? (Of course, unless they’re two completely different services.)
From Disney’s perspective, this is a total win. By combining Hulu and Disney+ into one app, both services will be able to operate on the same “technology platform.” This, Disney says, will save the company money and improve the customer experience. Plus, from a business perspective, the company can combine ad sales for Disney+ and Hulu. Expect to see a lot of ads for both services at once.
What does this mean for Hulu subscribers?
Of course, most of us don’t work at Disney and don’t directly benefit from what increases the company’s profits. If you’re a Hulu subscriber, you’ll be affected by how Disney responds to this sort of merger.
Let’s start from the beginning: This won’t happen overnight. According to Disney, the new combined Disney+ and Hulu app won’t arrive until 2026. Until then, you’ll be able to continue to use the service as normal.
Once the new app launches and Disney shuts down the standalone Hulu app, you won’t have to subscribe to Disney+ just to watch Hulu. Disney says you’ll still be able to subscribe to Hulu separately, even if you have to use the combined app to do so. You may already know that you can watch some Hulu content on Disney+ , but it’s a much more limited option than what Disney currently offers.
According to Variety, Disney plans to market Hulu + Live TV separately by bundling the service with Fubo, another live sports streaming service. However, a Disney+ spokesperson told Variety that Hulu + Live TV is planned to be integrated into the Disney+ app in 2026.
Is there any information on prices?
Not yet. Right now, you can bundle Hulu and Disney+ for $10.99 a month, or $19.99 for a virtually ad-free subscription. Hopefully, by bundling the services into one app, Disney will keep the prices down. But as we’ve seen with streaming services, prices keep going up.