Remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (of course you do), when the Ark of the Covenant is stored in a giant government warehouse That is not at all how I picture the Disney Vault. Where’s the sunshine, animal friendships, and spontaneous musicals Disney should give guided tours to the animation mecca — which is a real thing — but instead, the Mouse House is doing something nearly as good: releasing every movie in the Vault onto Disney+.
Disney CEO Robert Iger announced at a shareholder meeting on Thursday that the streaming service will house the “entire Disney motion picture library,” from (presumably) 1920s shorts like Alice’s Day at Sea to 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the company’s first full-length animated feature) to more recent fare, like Frozen, Mary Poppins Returns, and Ralph Breaks the Internet.
“The service, which I mentioned earlier is going to launch later in the year, is going to combine what we call Library product — movies and television — with a lot of original product as well,” Iger said. “And at some point fairly soon after launch, it will house the entire Disney motion picture library, so the movies that you speak of that traditionally have been kept in a ‘vault’ and brought out basically every few years will be on the service.” He also stressed that Disney+ will combine “both the old and the new. All of the films that we’re releasing this year, [starting] with Captain Marvel, will also be on the service.”
One big question remains: will Song of the South be let out of the Vault, or will it continue to be locked up in a maximum-security prison I guess we’ll find out when Disney+ launches later this year. What a wonderful day that will be.