“The FilmStruck indie, arthouse and classic film subscription-streaming service will shut down next month, Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks announced Friday,” Todd Spangler reports for Variety. “The FilmStruck business will cease U.S. and international operations on Nov. 29, 2018, and the service stopped accepting signups on Oct. 26.”
“FilmStruck offered a lineup of some 1,800 contemporary and classic arthouse, indie, foreign and cult films and also was the exclusive internet-streaming home to the Criterion Collection of movies,” Spangler reports. “Earlier this year, it added Warner Bros.’ library of classic films; WB shut down the Warner Archive service and migrated customers over to FilmStruck. The service was priced at $10.99 per month with access to the Criterion Collection library, and $6.99 monthly without it.”
“FilmStruck was developed and managed by Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in conjunction with Warner Bros. Digital Networks, overseen by Coleman Breland, Turner’s president of content experiences and president of TCM and FilmStruck,” Spangler reports. “The companies declined to disclose how many subscribers FilmStruck had signed up.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Should Apple go after exclusive deal for the Criterion Collection library?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz,” “Troy Robinson,” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
Time Warner consolidating everything for its own streaming service.. right along with Disney. Apple TV is going to be a barren wasteland of boringness.
I hope Apple hops on this great company.
Agree, would be great if Apple could grab this. I’m a subscriber to FilmStruck, really enjoy the content.
I’m also a subscriber. I’d like someone to save the whole thing, not just Criterion. There’s no comparable replacement for it.
I don’t own an Apple TV and I have zero interest in anything Apple has announced so far for their streaming service. But if Apple acquired the rights to the streaming content from the Criterion Collection, I would buy whatever Apple TV they wanted me to buy.
Criterion is fine. But FilmStruck has plenty of value outside Criterion. Non-subscribers wouldn’t be aware of that.
Uh-ohh…
Filmstruck fans had turned the service into their own angry symbol of their rebellion against “Streaming fatigue” and the drought of theatrical movies on the Big Three, and the fandom was almost literally becoming a lifehack cult over the ability to school themselves on Criterion foreign-films and Warner Archive vintage classics.
You can take away Crackle or Hulu, but take away Filmstruck, and the viewers’ growing frustrations with corporate streaming will finally start turning ugly…