Many Disney films and shows that Netflix will offer in Australia won't be available to New Zealand subscribers, the company says.

The United States streaming television service announced last year that it would launch a local service for Australian and New Zealand viewers in March.

Netflix had signalled the offerings in the two countries would be broadly similar, but said today that it would be unable to show newer programmes from Disney and Marvel's current catalogues in New Zealand because those rights had been sold elsewhere. Sky Television confirmed it had the rights.

Among the content that Netflix will be able to stream in Australia but not in New Zealand are the films

Frozen, Planes, Marvel's Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Saving Mr Banks and Muppets Most Wanted.

Netflix is expected to compete with, and be priced similarly to, Spark's Lightbox and Sky Television's delayed Neon internet television service, which have been priced at $15 and $20 a month respectively, but has not yet revealed its pricing in either country.

A representative said Netflix would offer Disney films such as Cars, Monsters In, Up, Jake and shows such as Never Land Pirates, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Good Luck Charlie in New Zealand.

It would also seek to secure more rights as and when they came up for renegotiation, he said.

"Netflix has said it is working towards striking global deals with content providers rather than local ones because that just doesn't make sense any more. But there are current deals already in place that they have to navigate around," he said.