'Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings' Now Available To Stream On Disney+

The Hit Marvel Movie Comes To Streaming!

By Culture SlatePublished 2 years ago • 3 min read

Marvel's Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, one of the top-performing box office movies of 2021, is now available to all Disney+ subscribers at no extra cost. Shang-Chi's box office success was due primarily to Disney's streaming strategy, which was to not stream the film at all until 45 days after it left theaters.

Eternals hit theaters last week and will follow the same strategy. However, unlike other Disney movies released during the pandemic (Black Widow), Shang-Chi and Eternals weren't available to stream on Disney+ when they hit theaters. While that undoubtedly helped boost Shang-Chi's box office gross, and will likely encourage more people to see Eternals at the theater, the strategy limits options for fans who adapted to streaming day-and-date movies at home during the pandemic.

A theatrical-only release like Shang-Chi arrived on Disney+ much sooner than the pre-pandemic days. Before the pandemic, Disney movies typically took five to eight months to hit the streaming service. But it's still longer than fans would have hoped. Can't please everyone, that's for sure. Disney committed to keeping Shang-Chi in theaters exclusively for 45 days, which was the middle of last October.

The streaming release of Shang-Chi coincides with what Disney is promoting as "Disney+ Day." This marketing campaign also includes the release of some standalone specials, promotional trailers, clips, and teasers. Along with Shang-Chi, Jungle Cruise is also available for Disney+ subscribers to watch at no extra cost. Jungle Cruise was a day-and-date release, but to watch it, you needed to pay an additional $30. Starting today, it's free to all Disney+ subscribers.

Shang-Chi came out in theaters on Sept. 3, significantly altering Disney's pattern during the pandemic. As cinemas closed or reduced capacity, Disney+ became an outlet to make movies more available to audiences, especially with the backlog of film releases. One cannot express how important a movie like Shang-Chi is to the Asian community with its predominantly Asian cast and Mandarin Chinese dialogue. Disney's CEO, Bob Chapek, called Shang-Chi an "interesting experiment." Shang-Chi star Simu Liu countered that by calling the film a "surprise."

Some Disney movies like Luca and Soul, which are typically lower-budgeted, completely skipped out on theatrical releases and were made available to stream right away to all subscribers. In addition, Disney+ introduced Premier Access for the most prominent, big-screen movies. Disney+ members could stream brand-new films at home for a $30 fee in addition to their subscription price. In July, Disney has released five movies with the Premier Access option, most notably; Black Widow.

Shang-Chi was the second Disney film to get a theatrical-only release (Free Guy was the first). In addition, it was the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film released only in theaters since July 2019 with Sony's Spider-Man: Far From Home. Unfortunately, Shang-Chi's box office performance didn't reach quite the same success monetarily as a pre-pandemic MCU release like Far From Home. In its first four weeks, Far From Home brought in about $340 million domestically. In comparison, Shang-Chi struggled to cross the $200 million mark.

Despite this, Shang-Chi still performed better at the box office than other pre-pandemic MCU movies such as Ant-Man (2015). And given that demand at the theaters still remains low, compared to pre-pandemic times, Shang-Chi has been a strong performer at the box office, particularly in the United States. Shang-Chi proved that if fans can't stream MCU movies at home, they will return to cinemas again to participate in one of the world's biggest movie franchises.

Source(s): The Atlantic, CNET

Written by Eric Onkenhout

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