#‘Mulan’ Will Be Released on Disney+ on September 4, But You’ll Have to Pay to Watch It

After delaying the release of Mulan several times, the Walt Disney Company has made an unprecedented announcement about the future of its latest live-action remake. The film will be released on Disney on September 4, 2020 – but you’ll have to pay $29.99 to rent it.

Director Niki Caro‘s live-action adaptation of the story was originally set to hit theaters back in March, but as the global pandemic began to take hold, Disney thought it would be wise to push it back to July. Then they pushed it to August. And now, despite analysts suggesting that its high budget of $200 million would never allow it to debut directly on Disney , it will be released theatrically (in whatever markets are open at that time) and on Disney on the same day.

But here’s what those analysts didn’t see coming: you’ll have to pay an additional $29.99 to rent the movie on Disney , which will be the first time the company’s streaming service has introduced the functionality of offering an extra paid tier of content. Thus far, the monthly subscription fee has given subscribers access to everything on the entire service. But that’s going to change with this film.

Disney CEO Bob Chapek made the announcement on today’s quarterly earnings call, and the implication was that viewers would need to specifically subscribe to Disney before they could then pay extra for the rental: in other words, it doesn’t seem like you’ll be able to rent it through a rival service like Amazon or iTunes.

Since the pandemic began, some people have been wondering why Disney wouldn’t release Mulan on paid VOD services or directly to Disney . The accepted answer to that question seems to come down to money: the thinking was that the budget for Mulan was simply too high to recoup through streaming, especially with many Chinese theaters still down for the count. (This version of Mulan was explicitly made to appeal to Chinese audiences – it’s more faithful to the original Chinese legend than Disney’s 1998 animated movie, which Chinese audiences bristled at.)

The idea of putting Mulan on Disney in this fashion tells me two things: one, that Disney is willing to adapt in these changing times, and two, that the company really needs an influx of cash after its recent admission that it just experienced a net loss of $4.72 billion in its third fiscal quarter this year.

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