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Is Disney getting the rights to the anime back?

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El Squibbonator

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Yesterday, I saw an announcement on Twitter that Disney-- which hasn't aired the anime since the Sun/Moon seasons-- will be regaining the broadcast and streaming rights to the Pokemon anime. However, I've yet to see any confirmation of this from an official source. Right now the American streaming home of the anime is Netflix, and as far as I'm aware Netflix hasn't shown any interest in giving it up, nor has their contract expired. So what's going on here?
 
Extra tweet mentions they only have the airing rights for the first Indigo League season as well as something else that's being made for next year. No idea whether it's anime related or if it's that Aardman project that's currently in the works for 2027.

Either way if this is true that means that Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Beyblade will be reunited together again on the same channel even if Pokémon's going to stick out quite a bit due to said season being much older than the latter two currently airing.
 
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El Squibbonator said:
So whatever happened to Netflix's rights?
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Absolutely no news on Netflix's side whatsoever. Might just be that Disney is only getting airing/streaming rights for some of the older seasons while they keep the rights for the newer stuff.
 
The fragmentation of the Pokémon anime across so many different streaming platforms is incredibly frustrating. I really wish they'd sync up the expiry dates for the contracts so that they could merge them together into a single license. This really isn't a good situation for the fans.
 
It sounds to me like Disney is trying to consolidate as much of the anime under their own umbrella as they can, so that shouldn't be an issue.
 
If it's just the first season then it's not that important as tons of platforms have it.
But if it's for future seasons then it could be interesting. It was clear Netflix just didn't want to pay the English dub debut license, that's why TPCI had to sell it to a random platform like BBC Player so Netflix could air the show right after BBC. If Disney buys that license, Netflix could still debut the episodes later (maybe with even less promotion as a revenge) or they could give up on the anime altogether. Would they retire everything? What would happen with Movies 22-23, the Arceus specials, Concierge and Journeys in general? Who knows...


Archaic said:
The fragmentation of the Pokémon anime across so many different streaming platforms is incredibly frustrating. I really wish they'd sync up the expiry dates for the contracts so that they could merge them together into a single license. This really isn't a good situation for the fans.
Click to expand...

At least the old seasons keep being uploaded free to Youtube and apparently it will be permanent. They are currently on early season 9 which means that the whole of the 4Kids dub is now available for free there (not counting movies, Chronicles, specials and censored episodes). They'll catch up until Sun & Moon eventually, at this rate around early 2028.
 
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