Hulu Strikes Deal with Sony Pictures for Older Movies and Shows
posted Sunday Jan 17, 2016 by Nicholas DiMeo
Back in September, Hulu finally gave users what they wanted - advertising-free streaming. For only $4 more per month than their initial paid package, streamers could enjoy no commercials on almost all content. Since then, Hulu has been riding high on its successes as it hopes to take on Netflix for the top video-streaming spot on the 'net. In order to help that motive along, the company continues to sign content deals with partners from all over the place, and this week was no exception. Hulu has reached out to Sony to ink a deal that will bring over older shows and movies to the platform.
Since Hulu is known for mostly current shows, it has been fighting to add a formidable backlog to its offerings in order to keep users engaged on the service. This deal with Sony Pictures will bring over some very popular shows of the 90s and 2000s. The full catalogs of The Shield, Party of Five, Damages, Happy Endings and Dawson's Creek will all make their way over to Hulu. For movies, titles like Jerry Maguire and My Best Friend's Wedding will also be found in Hulu's ever-expanding film selection.
This deal is after an initial deal with Sony Pictures that saw Seinfeld show up on the service for a cool $700,000. Early last year, Hulu began going on a contract frenzy with Disney, Comcast and Fox, all of which are co-owners of Hulu itself. The company also sought after AMC Networks and Discovery for exclusive deals for a bunch of content.
That's not all for Hulu, however. The green team is also focused on original content, much like Netflix and Amazon, in order to give customers a reason to pick one service over the other. A deal has been struck with award-winning producer J.J. Abrams and New York Times Bestseller Stephen King on an eight-part mini-series called 11.22.63. The show will premiere on February 15th and is based on King's book about a teacher who tries to go back in time to stop the assassination of JFK. Abrams spoke highly of Hulu in a statement that indicated he was shopping around the idea.
We feel incredibly lucky to be working with Hulu. They've been remarkable and incredibly collaborative and excited about this as we were. That really is why we ended up there. We did go out to a number of different places, had some offers, but the enthusiasm was clear and it matched ours.
Further proving its success, Hulu's newest comedy, Casual, was recently nominated for a Golden Globe Award, which was a first for Hulu.
