The Disney+ streaming service will be available on Amazon’s Fire TV, settling a reported dispute that threatened to impede Disney’s much-hyped rollout.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the companies were locked in a disagreement over the terms of the deal, specifically over how much ad space Amazon would control in the Disney app. Fire TV is the second-highest selling streaming device behind Roku, according to Strategy Analytics.
Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC that the company was making “significant progress” on inking distribution deals. Disney+ is also coming to platforms like Apple TV, LG and Samsung smart TVs, Roku and Google’s Chromecast, among others.
Fire TV customers will be able to sign up for a week-long free trial on their devices starting Nov. 12, and the service will cost $6.99 per month after that, CNBC said.
Tech and media giants have long sparred over streaming, but they have found ways to coexist in recent years. The Apple TV app finally arrived on Amazon Fire TV devices last month, Prime Video debuted on Apple TV in late 2017, and YouTube returned to Fire TV devices this summer, more than a year after it was removed.
But there may be more drama to come. HBO is building an engineering team in Amazon’s backyard to prepare for the 2020 launch of its HBO Max streaming service. Disney recently inked a deal with Microsoft, Amazon’s rival in the cloud, to speed up the production of movies with the help of cloud-based solutions. And Amazon was among the buyers of the YES Network, which was sold by Disney following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox.
