Disney+ will delete the Zach Sobiech biopic “Clouds” on Friday

Ross Raihala, Pioneer Press
·2 min read
1
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

If you’ve been meaning to watch the Zach Sobiech biopic “Clouds,” now is the time to do so. The streaming service Disney+ will remove the 2020 film as of Friday.

“Clouds” is one of 76 films and shows set to be deleted as Disney+ prepares to merge with Hulu later this year. While streaming services boomed in the early days of the pandemic, recent months have seen the biggest players upping prices while deleting content. Warner Bros. and Discovery led the charge after they merged last year and CEO David Zaslav cut dozens of titles from the two streamers and outright canceled the release of the nearly completed “Batgirl” movie after investing $90 million in it.

Sobiech, a Lakeland teenager, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare kind of bone cancer, in 2012. He recorded the song “Clouds” as a way to say goodbye to his friends and family and posted it to YouTube in December that year. By the time of Sobiech’s death in May 2013 at the age of 18, “Clouds” had gone viral and earned more than 3 million views. It has since topped 22 million views.

“Clouds” made it all the way to No. 3 on Billboard’s hot rock songs chart and found success in Canada, France, England, Belgium and Switzerland. It returned to the top of the iTunes chart in October 2020 after the release of the film.

Warner Bros. acquired the rights to Sobiech’s mother Laura’s memoir “Fly a Little Higher: How God Answered a Mom’s Small Prayer in a Big Way” in 2016. Actor/director Justin Baldoni spent five weeks shooting the movie in Quebec in late 2019.

While “Clouds” was initially planned as a theatrical release, the pandemic pushed Warner Bros. to sell it to Disney+. It earned mostly warm reviews, with a Variety critic writing that it “flirts with the generic, but has a heart and soul in pretty much the right place.”

Those who didn’t get to see “Clouds” may not be out of luck. Earlier this year, Warner Bros. Discovery released many of the company’s deleted titles to free, ad-supported streamers Tubi and the Roku Channel and it’s likely Disney+ will follow suit.

Related Articles