Hulu

• 1. Introduction

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  Hulu launched on the 29th of October 2007, and its name came from a pair of Mandarin Chinese phrases. The CEO at the time, Jason Kilar, explained that the word evokes the image of a gourd, which in Chinese tradition is a holder of precious things. That poetic logic sat at the center of a service built by rivals who had decided to cooperate. News Corporation and NBC Universal, two companies that competed fiercely on broadcast television, joined forces to put their content on the same platform. The questions that story raises are real ones. How did a joint venture between competing media giants become one of the most-subscribed streaming services in the world? And why, less than two decades later, is the company working through a plan called Project Gemini to dissolve itself into something else entirely?

• 2. Rivals at the Table

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  Bruce Campbell, Peter Chernin, JB Perrette, Mike Lang, Beth Comstock, George Kliavkoff, Darren Feher, and Jason Kilar were among the people instrumental in Hulu's founding. The name itself was not settled until late August 2007, when the site went live with nothing but an invitation to join a waitlist. The private beta began in October 2007, and public access opened on the 12th of March 2008. Providence Equity had moved even earlier than that, purchasing a 10% stake in July 2007 for a hundred million dollars, before the company had a public name. That investment brought Providence a seat on the board, where it was understood to serve as an independent voice. The Walt Disney Company joined as a stakeholder in April 2009, bringing with it plans to supply content from ABC, ESPN, and the Disney Channel. From the start, Hulu was less a single company than a negotiated truce among broadcasters who saw the internet as both a threat and an opportunity they could not afford to ignore.

• 3. Growth and Growing Pains

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  Early in 2010, Jason Kilar told reporters the service had turned a profit in two quarters and could exceed $100 million in revenue by that summer, more than it had earned across all of 2009. Monthly video streams had reached 903 million in January 2010, a figure more than three times higher than a year earlier, and second only to YouTube. By August of that year, reports surfaced that Hulu was weighing an initial public offering that could value the company at more than $2 billion. That number signaled how rapidly sentiment had shifted. Yet in June 2011, an unsolicited offer triggered deliberations about a sale, and Hulu's owners ultimately chose to hold on, concluding that no bidder had offered enough. The company generated $420 million in revenue in 2011, which fell $80 million short of its own target. Viacom pulled The Colbert Report and The Daily Show from the platform in early March 2010, with a spokesman noting that the monetization model was not yet working well enough for the arrangement to continue. Both shows returned in February 2011, though The Daily Show was removed again in March 2017, this time to redirect viewers to Viacom and Comedy Central's own apps.

• 4. Subscription Pivot

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  On the 29th of June 2010, Hulu launched its subscription service in a soft rollout, with a formal launch on the 17th of November 2010, under the name Hulu Plus. By the end of 2011, Hulu Plus had around 1.5 million subscribers. The service kept its advertising but offered full seasons of shows and same-day access to new episodes. By April 2015, the Hulu Plus branding was dropped entirely, with the service now marketed simply as Hulu; by that point the subscriber count had grown to 9 million. In August 2016, Hulu pulled its free on-demand tier and moved those shows to Yahoo. The company had decided to compete directly with subscription-only rivals rather than straddle both worlds. A no-commercials plan priced at $11.99 per month followed, sitting $4 above the ad-supported option at $7.99. A few highlighted network series, fewer than ten, kept pre-roll and post-roll ad pods even on the ad-free tier. By May 2018, the subscriber count had reached 20 million, a figure the company disclosed at a presentation held at the newly named Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden.

• 5. Disney Takes Control

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  On the 20th of March 2019, Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox gave it a 60% majority stake in Hulu. Within weeks, AT&T sold its 10% stake back to the company for $1.43 billion, lifting Disney's share to 67%. Comcast held the remaining 33%, and in May 2019 it agreed to cede active control to Disney immediately while retaining its stake as a silent partner, with an agreement that Disney could buy out Comcast's position as early as 2024 at a minimum company valuation of $27.5 billion. Disney framed the acquisition as the third pillar of its direct-to-consumer strategy, alongside ESPN+ and the forthcoming Disney+. In January 2020, Disney eliminated the standalone Hulu CEO role, with executives reporting directly up the Disney chain. Randy Freer, who had served as CEO since October 2017, resigned at the end of January 2020. In November 2023, Disney moved to complete the Comcast buyout, paying the agreed minimum floor price of $8.6 billion on December 1. A dispute over the final valuation dragged on until the 9th of June 2025, when both sides settled, with Disney paying Comcast an additional $438.7 million on top of the floor price.

• 6. Original Programming

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  Hulu's original content ambitions began modestly. From the 17th of January 2011 through the 24th of April 2014, the service produced The Morning After, a light-hearted pop-culture news show co-produced with Jace Hall's HDFilms and starring Brian Kimmet and Ginger Gonzaga. In January 2012, Hulu announced Battleground, a documentary-style political drama that would become its first scripted original. The Fashion Fund, a six-part reality series, followed that same month; the winner was to receive $300,000 toward starting a career. By April 2012, Hulu had announced seven original programs in total. On the 4th of May 2016, the service acquired The Beatles: Eight Days a Week as its first documentary acquisition. That film won the Best Music Documentary award at the 2016 Critics' Choice Documentary Awards, a Grammy for Best Music Film at the 2017 Grammy Awards, and two Creative Arts Emmys for sound. The biggest award moment came with The Handmaid's Tale, which at the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards won eight prizes and became the first streaming service to claim Outstanding Drama Series. Elisabeth Moss took Outstanding Lead Actress, and Ann Dowd won Outstanding Supporting Actress. At the 75th Golden Globe Awards, the series added Best TV Drama and Best Actress in a Drama for Moss.

• 7. Live TV and the Fubo Merger

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  Hulu announced plans for a live television service in May 2016, and by November of that year Fox and Disney had both committed their channel lineups to the offering. The service launched in beta on the 3rd of May 2017, carrying channels from NBCUniversal, A+E Networks, CBS Corporation, and Scripps Networks Interactive. By May 2018 it had reached 800,000 subscribers. In the third quarter of 2019, Hulu + Live TV overtook Sling TV as the leading over-the-top pay television service in the United States, with 2.7 million subscribers. The base price had begun at $39.99 per month and climbed to $64.99 by November 2020. By November 2021, Disney confirmed the service had reached four million subscribers. On the 6th of January 2025, FuboTV agreed to sell a 70% majority stake in its virtual pay-TV business to Disney and merge with Hulu + Live TV. Fubo had previously won a lawsuit against ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over a planned sports streaming joint venture, and as part of the merger agreement the consortium agreed to make a one-time payment of $220 million to settle that litigation. The merger closed on the 29th of October 2025, making the combined entity the sixth-largest pay-television operator in the United States. Fubo co-founder and CEO David Gandler leads the combined business.

• 8. Project Gemini

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  On the 6th of August 2025, Disney announced it would discontinue the standalone Hulu apps and fold the service into a unified Disney+ platform. Hulu content remained accessible through that unified app, and Disney confirmed as late as May 2026 that it had no immediate plans to shut down the standalone Hulu app. On the 28th of May 2026, Business Insider reported on an internal Disney document outlining a multi-phase plan called Project Gemini, which would transition all Hulu content and features into Disney+, with Hulu's technology stack decommissioned once users completed the move. The only standalone app already closed was the Nintendo Switch app, which shut down on the 5th of February 2026. Meanwhile, Disney replaced its Star brand on Disney+ in international markets with the Hulu name beginning the 8th of October 2025, giving the service its first meaningful presence outside the United States and Japan since the Japanese operation launched in 2011 and was sold to Nippon Television in 2014. The 8th of April 2026 report in The Wall Street Journal noted that the staffs of Hulu and Disney+ would be combined as part of broader cost-cutting within the Walt Disney Company. A service that began as a joint venture between competing broadcasters, reached 64.1 million paid memberships, and transformed the economics of television distribution may end not with a shutdown but with an absorption, its brand surviving internationally even as its technology quietly disappears.