First Netflix, now Google/YouTube. Silicon Valley’s technology companies continue their assault on the aging business model in Hollywood. Netflix announced recently that it had purchased exclusive rights to distribute a new TV show produced by Media Rights, a group linked to talent agency William Morris Endeavor. Now YouTube is talking about doing deals through talent agents with star actors to produce content for distribution on its popular platform.
STEPHEN F. DIAMOND
A legal scholar and political scientist at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley.
It was announced yesterday that Netflix has signed a deal with Paramount to stream Paramount content in Canada, a deal which includes “exclusive subscription television rights to all first-run films”.
Netflix will be able to stream Paramount content before HBO, Showtime, and other subscription providers.
Since launching in Canada in September Netflix has been on a mission to catch its Canadian service up to its streaming platform in the U.S.
The five-year deal will deliver more than 350 audiovisual works including not only recent Paramount content such as IRON MAN 2 and SHUTTER ISLAND but content dating back to the previous century, such pre1960 works as SUNSET BOULEVARD, A PLACE IN THE SUN, ROMAN HOLIDAY, SHANE, and the recently restored Cecil B. DeMille remake of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.
Netflix is also finalizing a five-year $100 million deal with Miramax for 700 audiovisual works.
You wrote here last week that three years ago the WGA, DGA, SAG and AFTRA “had secured a promise of a reopening of bargaining over revenues generated by new media such as online streaming, a space that is undergoing huge growth…
But that re-opener just did not open up”.
Not only do writers, performers and directors not have crackerjack exclusive representation, our exclusive representation has cracked.