The announcements came like a one-two punch. On Monday, Netflix announced it was acquiring Millarworld, the comic book label run by Wanted and Kick-Ass creator Mark Millar. The move would give the streaming service its own line of comic books to own and adapt, offering Reed Hastings’ company plenty of fodder as it continues to invest in original movies and television shows. Then on Tuesday, Disney delivered what could only be perceived as a fierce punch back: it will end its distribution deal with Netflix in 2019, launching its own standalone subscription service instead.

Disney’s deal has no doubt been in the works for months, but the timing seemed particularly pointed — especially since Disney’s press release touting its streaming service plans gave the Netflix split its own breakout paragraph. Netflix’s ambitions clearly go far beyond creating a streaming service, but both the Millarworld acquisition and the Disney reaction point to a changing media landscape. It’s one where Disney and Netflix companies are no longer collaborators or partners, but competitors, both racing for the same strategic vision.

Under current CEO Bob Iger, Disney has followed an aggressive content strategy based around purchasing popular intellectual properties and studios. In 2006, Disney announced its acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion. The company followed suit with Marvel Entertainment in 2009, then Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise in 2012. Each were multibillion-dollar bets, but the strategy paid off handsomely, with Disney earning more than $7 billion at the global box office last year alone, thanks to a string of hits like Finding Dory, Captain America: Civil War, and Star Wars: Rogue One.

At first blush, it’s tempting to look at Netflix’s Millarworld acquisition simply through the lens of blockbuster filmmaking and expanded cinematic universes. Variety’s Andrew Wallenstein characterized it as Netflix “trying to become more like Disney by bringing in a superhero factory,” and Netflix certainly did everything it could to fuel that perception. Chief content officer Ted Sarandos went so far as to call Millar “as close as you can get to a modern-day Stan Lee” in the company’s press release announcing the move. But the most interesting detail in the release pertained to the future of Millar’s written works: “Millarworld will also continue to create and publish new stories and character franchises under the Netflix label.”

Netflix is becoming a full-fledged entertainment company that operates across multiple mediums

That amounts to Netflix getting into the publishing business, turning it from a streaming service that creates related content into a full-fledged entertainment company that operates across multiple mediums. It’s still early in Netflix’s evolution, and the company certainly hasn’t risen to power in the same way other movie studios and production companies have. But if you squint, the long-term strategy is clear: this isn’t just about creating movies and shows to compete against those from studios like Disney or Sony. This is about becoming a new Disney outright, with the diversified portfolio of properties that comes with it.

Disney’s streaming move represents a radical escalation of the exclusivity trend that’s been driving subscription services. Historically, consumers could buy a movie or TV show from any number of sources — or see them in theaters. But as with Spotify in music, the advent of subscription on-demand services like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video has changed that. Film fans (or parents of Frozen-addicted children) may still buy standalone movies, but the trend has increasingly been toward streaming packages that offer up an assortment of content. With most quality and delivery problems ironed out, the only way to compete in that space has been with content itself — and content nobody else has is the biggest differentiator of all.

Amazon began leaning into the strategy aggressively in 2013, buying up shows for Amazon Prime Video so they weren’t available on any other service. The same logic has been behind its original content push, as well as that of Hulu, Netflix, and every other self-respecting service.

With some of the biggest films in the world steadily coming from its studios, Disney served as somewhat of a kingmaker with its previous Netflix deal. (Signing up for the only streaming service that offers Star Wars: The Last Jedi or Marvel’s latest films is a no-brainer for many audiences.) Using that same content to launch its own standalone service will give Disney absolute control. Not only will it be able to directly monetize those movies and TV shows with its own service, it will also give the company ultimate flexibility if it wants to mix-and-match packages or other services. It essentially brings Disney one step closer to being able to directly control and distribute every facet of its empire.

A holistic, 360-degree approach to exploiting new properties

Monetizing various intellectual properties across multiple mediums is part of the company’s great success. A character may launch in a Marvel comic or a Star Wars movie, but they can then be reutilized in dozens of different contexts. They can show up in TV shows or theme parks, appear as tie-ins on ESPN, or be part of an interactive toy. The goal is a holistic, 360-degree approach to exploiting these well-known IPs. And perhaps that’s why Netflix, seemingly eyeing a similar long-term strategy, has felt comfortable racking up more than $20 billion in debt building its own stable of original properties. It’s because the company is looking beyond today, where it’s a mere streaming service. Instead, it’s investing in its vision for tomorrow, where the properties it’s developing now will be able to generate profits in categories the company hasn’t even entered yet. In that future, Netflix is like all modern movie studios: an intellectual property generator above all else.

In 2013, Sarandos famously told GQ magazine that the company was in a race for legitimacy in original programming: "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." Four years later, Sarandos has largely pulled that off. Netflix may not have a global blockbuster on par with Game of Thrones, but it has cultural flashpoints like Stranger Things and House of Cards, and movies like Okja and Will Smith’s Bright.

If its new goal were to become Disney faster than Disney could become Netflix, then it would have already lost. Disney’s decades of movies and TV shows are all ready to go, and its standalone streaming service is set to launch in 2019. Game, set, and match.

But if Netflix’s goal is transform into the same kind of company that Disney is, then this week’s announcement was simply the beginning of a new chapter. Netflix already has more than 100 million subscribers in more than 190 countries, and its investment in its own programming is only increasing — to say nothing of the future potential of the Millarworld deal. The company will lose Disney’s licensed content, but Netflix execs seemed to recognize long ago that the best way for the company to control its own destiny was to control the content it was distributing. It sees where its long-term play could take it, as a full-scale competitor to the major media conglomerates. And judging by Disney’s immediate response yesterday, perhaps other media conglomerates do, too.