Viewers have expressed their disappointment that new sci-fi film Crater has been pulled from Disney+ less than two months after its release.
The film – which premiered on May 12 and came from Stranger Things producers Dan Cohen and Shawn Levy – is about a recently bereaved boy growing up on a lunar colony who takes a trip to a legendary crater with his four best friends.
Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez and starring Isaiah Russell-Bailey, Mckenna Grace and Billy Barratt, it reportedly cost $53.4million (£42million), but was only on the streaming service for 48 days before it was removed.
“@DisneyPlus can you guys give us heads up when you’re gonna yank shows or films off,” one Twitter used said in response.
“The ultimate result of movies become a product instead of art is this,” another added.
“I was JUST about to watch it!” a third shared. “This is the worst thing now about streaming,” another insisted.
Tried to rewatch the excellent Crater on @DisneyPlus only to find it’s been inexplicably deleted. It’s only been 3 weeks since I watched it. It’s like the pre-VCR era when missing a show meant it was gone, but at least then it was free. Why am I even paying for these services?
— Trike (@Trike) July 2, 2023
When you make art not to tell stories, but for profit you end up like this. Capitalism is the death of art https://t.co/cBa5JEslWN
— Flighty Broad Eva Terra (@WorstGirlEva) July 5, 2023
I had it saved & was supposed to watch it tomorrow
pic.twitter.com/g1lGtUTOLX
— Christian E. (@cjr3birth) July 3, 2023
Still didn’t get around to watching that feel bad for the people who worked on this movie
— Litz Evo (@litz_evo) July 3, 2023
In May, it was announced that Disney+ was set to remove a number of movies, TV series and specials from the streaming service by the end of the month. The decision was first announced on May 10 during a Disney earnings call.
“We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation,” Disney CFO Christine McCarthy said during the call.
It followed Disney CEO Bob Iger’s decision to cut down content on streaming services.
According to Variety, Disney targeted $3billion (£2.4billion) in savings for 2023, and will take a reduction of $1.5 billion (£1.2billion) to $1.8billion (£1.4billion) later this year for the loss of value in content developed for Hulu and Disney+ to draw new subscribers.
“This is part of the maturation process as we grow into a business that we had never been in,” Iger said.
“It’s critical we rationalize the volume of content we’re creating and what we’re spending to produce our content,” he told investors. “Our legacy platforms enable us to expand our audiences and often augment our potential streaming success while at the same time allowing us to amortize our content costs across multiple windows.”
Several Disney+ shows, however, are being licensed to Channel 4‘s official on-demand service.
The post Viewers are angry that Disney+ removed this sci-fi film less than two months after release appeared first on NME.
