This time it’s happening, Disney+ Hotstar is officially launching in India. The premium video streaming service would go live sharp at midnight on 3rd April 2020. As most of you may know, it’s actually a revamped Hotstar to Disney+ Hotstar. Bring in with it are the exclusive movies, TV Shows and documentaries from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic.
To welcome you to the Disney+ Hotstar launch, the service has announced a red carpet premiere on April 2nd. Well, you can’t walk through the red carpet due to the lockdown, but you could (and should) stay at home and stream. Its sort of virtual red carpet event where you could watch the premiere of The Lion King at 6 pm followed by a few episodes of Star Wars series The Mandalorian at 8 pm.
That’s not it, you could also get a chance to interact with your favourite celebrities on the social feed on the platform. This includes Hrithik Roshan, Katrina Kaif, Tiger Shroff, Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Kajal Aggarwal, Shahid Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Dulquer Salman, and Rana Duggabatti.
Disney+ Hotstar what’s coming?
All most entire collection of Disney+ original catalogue is available on Hotstar. This includes The Mandalorian, Disney Family Sundays, High School Musical, Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings, Encore, Marvel’s Hero Project and much more. Additionally, you also get access to the entire collection from Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic documentaries. Don’t forget the massive collection of Disney cartoons like DuckTales, Mickey Mouse, Hercules, Lion King, Tarzan etc.
In addition to Disney+ content, you could still keep watching the latest Bollywood movies, regional movies and Hotstar Specials shows. The service would also stream LIVE sporting action (including the IPL, BCCI cricket series, Premier League, ISL and PKL) and most of the STAR channels (live and catch-up). There is also a big catalogue of American shows from studios like HBO, Fox and Showtime.
Disney+ Hotstar Price Increase?
Looking to take a subscription in Disney+ Hotstar? The streaming service would be available in three plans. First, the free plan where you won’t need to register to the service, but can continue to watch free content. This includes catch-up TV shows (mostly STAR channels) in eight Indian languages, movies, on-demand news and sports clips. Do note that there would be frequent advertisement during the stream.
Next subscription plan is the Disney+ Hotstar VIP subscription and it cost Rs 399 per year (previously it was Rs 365 per year). This plan includes access to movies from Marvel Cinematic Universe (like The Avengers, Iron Man, Thor etc), The Lion King, Frozen II, Aladdin and Toy Story 4. Also, you get to stream all the free contents and live sports action with fewer ads in-between.
One culprit in this plan is that you could only stream most of the movies in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Most of the English movies would miss the English audio and you need to be happy with the dubbed Indian language audio.
Thus, we end up with Disney+ Hotstar Premium subscription which packs everything under Disney+ Hotstar VIP subscription along with English language content and 29 critically acclaimed Disney+ Originals. You would also get to watch the latest American shows from studios like HBO, Fox, Showtime. The charges for this plan have been bumped up from Rs 999 per year to the new price of Rs 1499 per year.
All existing subscribers (both Premium and VIP) will be automatically upgraded to their respective new subscription plan on April 3. You will be charged the new rates upon the next renewal of the subscription plan.