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Ron Howard and George Lucas’ Willow, starring Warwick Davis, Val Kilmer, and Joanne Whalley became a cult favorite over the years and spawned a book series by George Lucas and comics writer Chris Claremont. While those books became non-canonical, a proper sequel series was made for Disney+ last year, but it didn’t pull the magic of the original movie and was canceled after the first season.
However, Disney pulled the series completely off its streaming service as has been a go-to move for a lot of streaming platforms in favor of tax write-offs to turn a profit on less-than-popular shows. Davis took to Twitter to vent his frustrations about the loss of the show.
“I meet lovely people on a daily basis who are fans of Willow, who are the reason the DisneyPlus Series was made,” Warwick said. “Please tell me, [Walt Disney Company], what do I say to these subscribers when they ask why they can’t watch the series anymore?” He ended the post with an “embarrassing” hashtag.
Back in May, Disney CFO Christine McCarthy explained that Disney is “in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation,” and that this review will result in the removal of “certain content from the company’s streaming platforms.”
She went on to reveal that Disney expects to incur a writedown in the third quarter of between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion as a result of this move. It removed several shows from the streaming service not just Willow, but also the Turner and Hooch remake, The Mysterious Benedict Society, and The World According to Jeff Goldblum.
The CFO also noted that going forward, Disney intends to produce “lower volumes of content in alignment with this strategic shift.” This means that while the company will still be creating content, it will be producing less of it to focus on a smaller number of high-quality offerings. This includes even not releasing fully-made productions like their adaptation of the Spiderwick Chronicles.
