Everyone and their mother bought tickets to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens when they officially went on sale earlier this week. Records were broken, as was the internet for a short time, which leads many geniuses in their field to project that this movie will, uh, be pretty successful when it hits theaters in December.
It’s been roughly four decades since the original film premiered and since then, movie fans have begun consuming their content in a different manner than simply heading out to the multiplex for a night out. Keeping with this growing trend which finds people never leaving the house, Disney and Netflix have joined forces to bring the first six Star Wars movies to their service. This is all well and good for those who wish to relive the glory days (?) of Jar Jar Binks, but many fans are already curious when The Force Awakens will be hitting the streaming platform. According to Variety, J.J. Abrams’ new installment to the ever-growing film series will be available on Netflix in 2016… but only if you live in Canada.
Yes, you read that right. Netflix subscribers in Canada will get to stream the film first, as our neighboring country to the north is currently the only territory that has successfully secured streaming rights for the film. The reason for this has everything to do with timing as Disney’s pay-TV distribution deals were up for grabs and Netflix Canada moved quickly to secure rights with Disney in a contract that started in 2015.
Here in the U.S, premium cable channel Starz’ exclusive deal with Disney expires at the end of 2015 with Netflix’s deal with the company set to start early next year. Since Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits theaters on December 18th, this falls under the deal with Starz which means, that’s right, time to order the cable channel that is currently the home of shows like Black Sails and Da Vinci’s Demons.
But hey, look at it this way, the seventh film in the hugely popular mega-franchise will soon be housed at the network which will find Bruce Campbell returning as chainsaw-weilding Ash Williams to continue the fight against those pesky Deadites next weekend. If you ask me, that’s pretty, uh, groovy!
(Via Variety)
