The great streaming arms race is over, and Disney just declared victory by refusing to keep shooting.
At the Wells Fargo TMT Conference in late 2025, CFO Hugh Johnston delivered what might be the most adult presentation any Hollywood executive has given in a decade. In 2026 Disney will spend exactly $24 billion on content: $12 billion on sports (ESPN) and $12 billion on general entertainment. That’s a modest $1 billion bump from 2025 and a staggering $9–10 billion less per year than the peak insanity of 2021–2023, when the industry collectively torched north of $120 billion trying to out-spend each other into oblivion.
“We overproduced. And frankly, we weren’t happy with a lot of what we made,” Johnston admitted, sounding like a man who had personally sat through the cutting-room carnage of Willow season two and Secret Invasion.
Translation: the era of green-lighting 47 Marvel shows because the algorithm said “super-hero fatigue” was still three years away is dead.
The new religion is discipline. Content spend will now rise strictly in line with direct-to-consumer revenue growth, which Disney expects to stay in the healthy double digits through 2028. For the first time since the launch of Disney+ in 2019, capex is being treated like capex, not like a cocaine-fueled poker bet.
The pivot has three pillars:
1. Quality over quantity
Instead of 300+ scripted series across Disney+, Hulu, Star+, and Hotstar, the company is sliding toward 120–150 high-impact titles per year. Think 2019-level focus: one Andor, one Loki, one Shōgun, not twelve mediocre Star Wars spin-offs that cannibalize each other.
2. Localization as the new growth hormone
Disney finally noticed that Netflix makes 60 % of its content outside the U.S. and that international markets now account for 68 % of Disney+ paid subscribers. Starting in 2026, every major territory will get at least two tent-pole local originals backed by Marvel-level marketing budgets. India already has eight projects in active development, Korea twelve, Brazil ten. The goal: stop being the American service that happens to work overseas and become the local service that happens to be owned by an American mouse.
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3. The “everything hub” strategy
By late 2026, Disney+ in the U.S. will morph into a single super-app that bundles linear ESPN when it goes direct-to-consumer, Hulu’s general-entertainment catalog, in-app sports betting (via ESPN Bet), shoppable merchandise, theme-park ticket integration, and exclusive gaming content. One login, one subscription, one credit card on file. Amazon wishes Prime Video could dream this big.
The early numbers are almost embarrassing for the competition.
The Disney/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle, now priced at $29.99 with ads, has an 80 % take-rate among new sign-ups.
Direct-to-consumer operating income swung from a $4 billion annual loss in 2022 to a $2.1 billion profit run-rate by Q4 2025. ARPU in the U.S. climbed 18 % year-over-year, thanks to price hikes that barely dented churn.
And in the ultimate Netflix cosplay move, Disney quietly stopped reporting subscriber counts after hitting 195.7 million combined paid subs in September 2025. “We don’t think total subscribers is the most useful metric anymore,” Johnston shrugged. The industry understood the message immediately: we’re profitable, we’re disciplined, and we no longer need to brag about vanity metrics to Wall Street.
While Paramount explores a fire-sale to Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery drowns in $39 billion of net debt, and NBCUniversal wonders if Peacock will ever turn black ink, Disney is doing something radical: acting like a company that plans to exist in 2035.
The mouse didn’t win by outspending everyone.
It won by being the first to stop.
Author: Slava Vasipenok
Founder and CEO of QUASA (quasa.io) — the world's first remote work platform with payments in cryptocurrency.
Innovative entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in IT, fintech, and blockchain. Specializes in decentralized solutions for freelancing, helping to overcome the barriers of traditional finance, especially in developing regions.
