Netflix Ends Epix Cable Deal, Pulling High-Profile Films
31 August 2015 - 10:50AM
Dow Jones News
Major Hollywood films like "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and
"World War Z" will be shifting from Netflix to Hulu in coming
weeks, as pay-TV channel Epix switches up its streaming
partners.
The moves reflect a broader trend in the streaming-video
business as Netflix Inc. continues to become pickier about paying
for rights to TV shows and movies that can be found elsewhere. At
the same time, a newly aggressive—yet, for content owners, more
accommodating—Hulu is ramping up its content spending to challenge
Netflix's dominance.
Netflix said Sunday that it had allowed its deal with Epix to
lapse at the end of September because the streaming-video company
is trying to move away from nonexclusive content toward its own
original programming and exclusive rights to movies.
Epix is owned by MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and Viacom
Inc.'s Paramount studios and has the rights to high-profile films
like "Transformers: Age of Extinction." In addition to its deal
with Netflix, Epix signed a deal with Amazon Prime Instant Video in
2012 and announced Sunday that it has just signed a deal with Hulu
starting in October.
"While many of these movies are popular, they are also widely
available on cable and other subscription platforms at the same
time as they are on Netflix," wrote Netflix Chief Content Officer
Ted Sarandos in a blog post Sunday. "Through our original films and
some innovative licensing arrangements with the movie studios, we
are aiming to build a better movie experience for you."
Mr. Sarandos said Netflix has been trying to develop its own
slate of original movies with stars like Brad Pitt, Ricky Gervais
and Judd Apatow, but acknowledged that "it will take us time."
In the meantime, Netflix announced an array of originals,
including "Ridiculous Six," the first of four comedies from Adam
Sandler, and "A Very Murray Christmas," in which Sofia Coppola
directs Bill Murray, both coming in December.
This shift toward originals mirrors what Netflix did in
television with "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black,"
investing more in its own series even as it got pickier on its
licensing deals for reruns.
This pickiness has created an opening for the much smaller Hulu,
which is owned jointly by 21st Century Fox, Comcast Corp.'s
NBCUniversal and Walt Disney Co.
This year, Hulu is expected to double its spending on content to
$1.5 billion according to RBC Capital Markets analyst David
Bank.
(21st Century Fox and News Corp, owner of The Wall Street
Journal, until mid-2013 were part of the same company.)
For Epix, which has 14 million subscribers—less than half the
count of category-leading HBO—the strategy has been to try to
distribute its content to as many players as possible as the
subscription streaming-video industry expands, according to people
familiar with the matter.
The tech blog Re/Code earlier reported that Epix was likely to
replace its Netflix deal with Hulu.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 30, 2015 20:35 ET (00:35 GMT)
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