28% Of Netflix Users Claim They Will Cancel When Disney, Marvel, Star Wars Leave The Service

Netflix may be the streaming giant to beat, but with Disney amassing the forces of Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and now Hulu behind it, that giant could be knocked down a peg. And the House of Mouse and its upcoming streaming service Disney+ could hit Netflix where it hurts most: their subscribers. A new poll suggests that Netflix users could cancel their subscription to the service if it lost Disney or Disney-related titles like Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and the Star Wars films. But saying you would cancel Netflix is different than actually going through with it.

The Hollywood Reporter teamed up with Morning Consult to conduct a survey of  2,201 adults from May 2 to 5 to ask them about their streaming and TV-watching habits. According to THR, abut 28% of respondents said they would cancel their Netflix subscription of Marvel, Star Wars, or Disney films were taken off the service.  THR writes:

Some 22 percent of Americans in the new poll said they'd cancel their Netflix subscription if Disney's Marvel Studios films (like Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War) were removed from the platform. And 20 percent said they'd drop the streamer if Lucasfilm's Star Wars movies left the service.

Among the 18-29 age group, those numbers rise to 35 percent who said they'd drop Netflix over losing Marvel Studios films and 26 percent who replied that they'd cancel over losing Star Wars films.

But this all seems very unlikely considering there are five Marvel movies at most on Netflix at a time, and even fewer Star Wars movies. The Disney titles are abundant, sure, but subscribers barely notice when Beauty and the Beast is traded out for Mulan, for example. And at this point, Netflix has become more convenient to keep than to cancel, with the steady influx of thousands of new original shows and movies released regularly. Basically, I call hogwash on this survey. Unless the only movies you've ever seen on Netflix are Marvel movies, you're unlikely to cancel Netflix over them making their move to Disney+.

However, it's possible that people are displeased with Netflix's frequent price hikes or cancellations of beloved shows in favor of in-house produced titles. And at some point, we're going to reach a streaming service tipping point — when audiences grow tired of juggling multiple streaming platforms that grow more expensive by the day. But it would take a lot for subscribers to cancel Netflix, which still remains the most wide-reaching of streaming services. Maybe if it lost Friends or The Office, as Netflix is set to when NBCUniversal moves its content to its own service around 2021 (in that case, 17% say they would cancel).

But whatever the case, we're all just pawns in this battle of the monopolies, eating up the content until one day we'll all be pledged for life to corporations.