Imagine this: a brand new movie is out and you are very excited to watch it.  You turn on Disney+, a service you pay money to subscribe to, only to find out you have to pay an extra $30 to watch the movie you were so excited to see! That is ridiculous. No one should have to pay to watch a movie on a streaming service for which they already pay. 

Now, advocates of the additional charge are likely to point out the expense of going to a movie in the theaters.  These people are likely to believe that going to the theater is too expensive.  However, to watch the movie, you realistically will only pay around seven dollars. There are, however, concessions, but you are not required to buy concessions as a condition of seeing the movie.  Theatres are not restricting one’s access to the movie by charging an arm and a leg to see the picture.  However, when a streaming service demands an additional charge, they are essentially doing that which everybody accuses theatres of doing: hiking up the cost to view a much-anticipated feature.  To contend the theatre is too expensive while saying that streaming services are justified to charge extra is attacking the straw man.

Aside from the simplicity of greedy intentions, the recent Covid-19 pandemic is essentially giving streaming services a reason to charge individuals for being careful. As we know, staying at home can cause boredom and many people rely on their streaming services to stay occupied. Streaming services are being downright avaricious while charging someone an extra $30 for something they already pay for monthly

Rather than charging an extra fee for new releases, a far better system would be to charge a slightly increased fee for the streaming service itself.  Take Disney+, for example.  At $7 a month, Disney+ is making a little less than $8 billion a year off the roughly 95 million subscribers they reported this February.  When Disney+ released the live-action remake of Mulan, they charged the roughly 9 million subscribers who wanted to see the movie $30, meaning the picture generated $270 million in revenue from this release alone.  A $1 increase to the subscription cost of Disney+ would generate an extra $1.14 billion in annual revenue, meaning that Disney+ could release four such releases to ALL of its subscribers and average a return of $285 million per picture - $15 million more per picture than what they generated releasing Mulan the way they did.  Not only would Disney+ generate more money, but at an extra $12 per year, subscribers would be saving money compared to the cost of buying even one new release at the $30 Disney+ charged for Mulan.  

Overall, streaming services do not need to charge an extra $30 for movies on a platform people pay for monthly.  They are being greedy with people’s money and are taking advantage of those who want to be careful with Covid-19 and cannot go to the theaters. It is important for customers of streaming services to hold firm and not purchase new releases as a sign to these services that additional charges will not be tolerated.