‘Lightyear’ Just Tipped When ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ Will Start Streaming

    
    Thor: Love and Thunder hit theaters July 8.?
    Jasin Boland/Marvel
    

    Thor: Love and Thunder hit theaters July 8. But critics’ middling reviews (“disappointingly shallow” is how our own reviewer described it) may have you holding out until the film moves out of cinemas and onto Disney Plus.?
    You’ll have to play a guessing game about how long that will be.
    Disney’s streaming strategy for its theatrical releases has been all over the map. Encanto?spent a month in theaters before streaming. For Marvel’s Eternals, it was two. West Side Story — the Steven Spielberg reimagining of the musical — hit Disney Plus about three months after it played exclusively in cinemas.?
    Disney hasn’t confirmed a streaming release date for Thor: Love and Thunder yet, but here are some educated guesses about what to expect.?
    When is Thor: Love and Thunder’s streaming release date on Disney Plus?

    Disney hasn’t set a streaming release date for Thor: Love and Thunder. But Disney disclosed Lightyear’s streaming release date Tuesday, and with that, it’s a safe bet that Thor will begin streaming on Aug. 24 on Disney Plus.?
    

    During the height of lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions, Disney Plus introduced what it called Premier Access, which let subscribers stream its theatrical movies the same day they hit cinemas after paying an extra $30 fee on top of their normal subscription cost. But for more than a year, Disney has been giving its live-action theatrical releases long stints of exclusivity in theaters before making streaming an option.?
    Unfortunately, Disney’s hasn’t officially declared on a standard length for these theatrical exclusives yet. But the company appears to be settling on giving its theatrical films 47 days in theaters before streaming it on Disney Plus.
    Disney’s last two films both spent 47 days in theaters before hitting Disney Plus:?Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?became available to stream 47 days after its wide release in theaters — that’s two weeks quicker than Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. And most recently, Disney announced Tuesday that Lightyear, its first Pixar movie to be released in theaters at all since early 2020, will start streaming on Disney Plus on Aug. 3 — also 47 days after its theatrical release.?
    That’s why Aug. 24 is the date to expect. It would mean Disney has Thor: Love and Thunder following the same 47-day timeline.
    With Disney appearing to adopt this 47-day window, it’s also moved closer to the norms of other major studios, which have largely gravitated to theatrical exclusivity lasting about 45 days. (There are, however,? exceptions for big franchise-film blockbusters this summer.) The good news is that this so-called “window” of time is shorter than it was when Disney first reintroduced theatrical exclusives last year.?
    Fortunately, unlike some other studios, Disney typically confirms the streaming release date for its films a couple weeks in advance, so the official date should be set in early August.?