Toy Story 5 will begin streaming on Disney+ on September 23, completing most of its consumer release cycle in just over three months.

The movie opened theatrically June 19, moved to digital purchase on August 18 and is scheduled for Blu-ray on September 22. Disney+ follows the next day.

The windows still exist, but they are tightly packed

Disney is not collapsing theatrical distribution, premium digital sales, physical media and subscription streaming into one simultaneous release.

Instead, each window gets a relatively short turn before the next one begins.

That structure allows the company to collect several different kinds of revenue from the same movie before folding it into the recurring value proposition of Disney+.

Toy Story 5's billion-dollar box office also makes the strategy easier to read. Streaming is receiving a proven hit after its theatrical value has already been demonstrated, not being used as an emergency destination for an underperforming release.

The movie itself is about losing attention to a screen

There is an unusually neat overlap between the distribution story and the plot. Toy Story 5 introduces Lilypad, a tablet voiced by Greta Lee that begins taking Bonnie's attention away from Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the other toys.

The threat is not that Lilypad is a stronger toy. It is that a connected screen competes for the same limited leisure time.

That makes Disney+'s role in the movie's afterlife slightly ironic. The film about physical play competing with screens will soon be available on televisions, phones and the exact class of tablet that its characters spend the story worrying about.

A theatrical hit becomes catalogue infrastructure

Andrew Stanton directed Toy Story 5, with Kenna Harris as co-director. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Joan Cusack return as Woody, Buzz and Jessie.

Disney is also pairing the streaming announcement with a new piano-version video for Taylor Swift's I Knew It, I Knew You, using footage from the movie and extending the release across Disney+ and music services.

On September 23, the latest billion-dollar Pixar release stops being only a product Disney sells individually and becomes part of the library it uses to justify a recurring subscription.