‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ May Hit Disney Plus Next Week

    Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Love and Thunder.
    Jasin Boland/Marvel
    

    Thor: Love and Thunder hit theaters July 8. But with?middling reviews (“disappointingly shallow” was the?CNET reviewer’s reaction), you may be holding out until the film leaves cinemas and moves onto Disney Plus.?
    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 months. West Side Story — the Steven Spielberg reimagining of the musical — hit Disney Plus about three months after it played exclusively in cinemas.?
    For now, it’s a guessing game how long Thor will take to stream, but a pattern has emerged that may make it simple to predict. ?
    When is Thor: Love and Thunder’s Disney Plus release date?

    Disney hasn’t confirmed a streaming release date for?Thor: Love and Thunder?yet. But Lightyear’s streaming release date has made it a safe bet Thor will begin streaming Aug. 24 on Disney Plus.?
    During the pandemic lockdown, Disney let many movies stream on Disney Plus the same day they were released in cinemas. 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 a standard length for these theatrical exclusives yet.?
    

    However, the company appears to be settling on giving its theatrical films 47 days in theaters before streaming them 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, Pixar’s Lightyear started streaming on Disney Plus on Aug. 3 — also 47 days after its theatrical release.?
    That’s why Aug. 24 is the date to expect Thor: Love and Thunder.
    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.?