Disney+’s Slowing Growth Could Be the End of an Era for Riskier TV Shows

It’s fair to say that the pool of people who don’t have at least one streaming subscription is small, with 83% of the U.S. population currently watching content on at least one streaming platform. However, a recent study shows that about 40% of Americans are cutting back on their subscriptions — not ditching them outright, just being more selective in what they keep. Even in such an environment, the number of subscribers to Disney+ is, at worst, maintaining the status quo, or, per the company’s 2025 fiscal report, growing moderately, but that could stil be bad news for riskier TV shows.

Disney Has Been Embracing Nostalgia and Proven Franchises

A conglomerate like Disney could go in one of two directions in response to this development. On the one hand, they could make bold, risky TV shows that draw in new subscribers willing to check out exciting and new content. On the other, they could fall back on the tried-and-true: reboots, remakes, legacy sequels, and proven franchises.

Time and again, Disney makes a calculated gamble that either fails outright or doesn’t succeed enough, and cuts bait, or they find success with a project and ride the wave until it’s been milked dry. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl was a gamble that worked, and then they rode the franchise to oblivion with increasingly tired sequels. But now, instead of taking a bold risk, they’re actually going back to the franchise with a sixth film. Adapting The Lion King for live-action wasn’t exactly a big risk, but it paid off. However, instead of taking risks with something new, they’re revisiting each one of their animated classics to do the same thing.

The same thing has already happened with Disney+. WandaVision was the first MCU TV series, but with interest in the franchise sky-high, it was hardly a risk — until the service became oversaturated with MCU content. Daredevil: Born Again definitely marked a change for the streamer, a decidedly TV-MA series unlike the bulk of Disney+’s content, yet the success of Deadpool & Wolverine proved that there was a market for it. And the revival of beloved sitcom series Malcolm in the Middle, Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, simply wasn’t going to fail.

Disney+ Could Play It Safe, but at a Cost

It is, in fact, the last two that most likely point to the direction Disney+ goes to address their subscriber-dilemma-that-isn’t-really-a-dilemma dilemma. Both leverage known properties in the hopes of boosting their subscription numbers by wooing fence sitters with the nostalgia of the latter, and the “more of what you loved in 2024” in the former. Anything that proves to be divisive in the least, like Goosebumps, Willow, or The Acolyte, already has a short leash, so the odds that Disney+ is going to give safe harbor to series that automatically lose half their audience off the bat are slim, at best, when shows that are guaranteed a built-in audience that also have the potential to pull in others are far more appealing.

As it is, anything truly risky is kept at arm’s length by falling under the Hulu banner. But as Disney+ continues to integrate Hulu into the parent app, series that benefit from that separation, your Shōgun or Dopesick, for example, are more likely to fall to the lowest common denominator – the inoffensive, non-divisive content – than the other way around. It sounds ridiculous, perhaps, but former Disney CEO Bob Iger has more or less suggested that this is the direction they plan to go in to improve subscriber growth.

Making creative, risky content is, unsurprisingly, not part of the plan, and that is going to come at a cost for Disney. Nostalgia and safe bets have done the job to date, but the unwillingness to take risks with their content has an inherent flaw. Sure, their long, storied history has allowed them to utilize the nostalgic element longer than most. But it’s bold, original ideas that really drive people to streamers, as Stranger Things did for Netflix. It was something that easily could have failed, but the benefits ultimately outweighed the drawbacks.

Moves like that are appealing to creatives in the field, directors, and actors who want to work with companies that allow them a degree of creativity. If Disney+ moves towards a controlled environment for the projects it allows, and there’s little to suggest they won’t, they will become a pariah to the truly creative who are looking to take risks, and instead attract lesser talent willing to work within a box for the pay. And with people becoming more discerning about what they’re opting to stick with for streamers, it’s a price that Disney+ may rue not having paid from the outset.