The coronavirus outbreak has been spreading to additional countries aggressively, with Iran, Italy, and South Korea becoming the biggest COVID-19 hot zones aside from China. The virus is far from being contained and authorities expect more people to be infected in the weeks and months to come. As a result, a variety of big events have been canceled over the past few weeks, including prominent ones like the Mobile World Congress and the Geneva Auto Show. Even the Summer Olympics are at risk, depending on what happens with the outbreak in the near future. Before we get to that, we’ll likely see other events get canceled, and the latest one concerns Disney’s wildly popular video streaming service.
Disney was supposed to hold a Disney+ launch event in London later this week ahead of the service’s launch in the region. Disney+ is currently available only in the Netherlands, but several other markets in the region will get it on March 24th, including the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland.
Disney had scheduled a press event for Thursday, followed by a press conference and panel on Friday. Both of them are now officially gone from the calendar. “Due to a number of media attendee cancellations and increasing concerns at the prospect of traveling internationally at this time, we have decided to cancel our Disney+ launch events scheduled to take place on Thursday and Friday,” a spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.
The European launch details for Disney+ wasn’t the reason we were waiting for this particular event to happen. Disney and Marvel were rumored to reveal actual launch dates for several Marvel TV series that are supposed to premiere on Disney+ later this year in all the markets where the service is available. Some rumors claimed that Marvel might have even been planning to announce new shows that haven’t yet been detailed.
We already know that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will launch in August followed by WandaVision in December. But these are just two of the eight MCU Phase 4 TV series that will be released over the course of 2020 and 2021. Many of them are already in production, and all of them will be tied directly to the six movies that are part of the next phase.
The press briefing will still take place over webcast next week, so Disney isn’t abandoning the event entirely. And we’ll likely get launch dates for some of the upcoming MCU TV shows. After all, Disney needs to announce more original content for its streaming service to keep subscribers happy. But the lack of an actual press conference and panel will surely deprive us of information that might not make it into a webcast next week.
