As Disney+ approaches its fifth anniversary in France, Hélène Etzi, president of The Walt Disney Company France, took the opportunity at a keynote session to outline the platform’s evolution and priorities for 2025. The address focused on expanding local content, new distribution strategies, and adapting to shifting market conditions.
‘Streaming offered us a powerful way to get closer to our audience, to better understand their expectations and respond to them’, said Etzi during the recent edition of Series Mania Forum. She pointed to the platform’s role not just in distributing global content but also in developing new formats and programming—both in the United States and locally in France.
One of the major goals moving forward, Etzi noted, is to find a balance between Disney’s global brand identity and the demand for local productions. ‘We want to combine the best of both worlds for the benefit of our subscribers’, she said, citing collaborations between Disney+ France and national broadcasters as a key part of that approach.
A recent example is the French series HPI, which Disney+ pre-acquired for the local market. Following its strong performance both on the platform and on TF1, the team encouraged ABC to adapt it for the U.S. market. The result was High Potential, which has performed well on ABC and Hulu and was recently renewed.
Since its launch in April 2020, Disney+ in France has diversified its offering. The introduction of the Star brand in 2021 brought films and series targeting adults to the platform. More recently, Disney+ introduced an ad-supported plan, which Etzi described as a response to ‘economic pressure on household budgets’.
In terms of partnerships, 2025 marks a shift in distribution. With the end of its deal with Canal+, Disney+ France has signed new agreements with the country’s four major telecom operators. According to Etzi, ‘These three-year agreements will allow us to benefit from the success of our films nine months after their theatrical release’. The release of Deadpool & Wolverine on Disney+ France past April, was the first under this model.
The platform is also evolving its financing strategies. Etzi explained that Disney+ is now working through three key models: second-window agreements with broadcasters (such as HPI), first-window co-productions (Ghosts with TF1), and full editorial control over original productions with linear TV rights made available to local channels.
For 2025, Disney+ France has announced a slate of new content. The second season of Bref has become the platform’s most successful French original to date and is now available internationally via Hulu. April will see the release of Ghosts, a French remake of the BBC series, and later in the year Les disparues de la gare, a true crime drama set in 1990s Perpignan. Also in the pipeline is Lucky Luke, currently in post-production, with Alban Lenoir playing the title role.
A new comedy set in a prison, starring Jean-Pascal Zadi and Audrey Lamy, is also in development.
Etzi laid out the platform’s criteria for measuring success: ‘We look at how many subscribers watch the series, how many new subscribers it brings, the number of episodes viewed, word of mouth, critical reception, and sometimes its ability to succeed internationally’. She cited Kaiser Karl, which performed well in Germany and the U.S., as an example.
Discussing broader industry trends, Etzi noted that the market had seen an oversupply of content in previous years. ‘Today there is more moderation in investments. The battle for attention is intense and highly fragmented. It’s better to focus on quality over quantity, while still surprising the audience’, she concluded.
