Well, the day that we warned you about last September is finally at hand – some 800 Walt Disney, Sony, Pixar and original Starz programming titles controlled by the pay cable outlet will no longer be available for streaming on Netflix after February 29. Among the titles disappearing are Tangled, Toy Story 3, Tron: Legacy, Secretariat, The English Patient, Apocalypto and Scarface.
Netflix and Starz were unable to come to an agreement last fall that would have allowed the online service to keep streaming the content. With content becoming more valuable as the popularity of streaming services such as Netflix continues to grow, Starz felt that they deserved a bigger payday for their films than Netflix was willing to pay. In 2010, Netflix paid out approximately $180 million in rights for material. It is estimated that this year the service will be paying out something close to $1.9 billion.
The Starz-controlled titles will still be available through Netflix’s DVD rent-by-mail service.
This is not the first time that Starz content has been removed from Netflix’s streaming service. Last June, Netflixwere forced to suddenly pull hundreds of titles from Sony Pictures – including popular titles like Salt and The Social Network. It turns out that the contract that Netflix had signed with Starz, the distributor of the Sony material, called for a cap on the number of subscribers who can watch Sony movies online. Once that limit was reached the agreement was rendered null and void.
For a complete list of the films and television series that will not be available as of March 1, head over to the list at TV And Movies Now. The list is sortable by a number of categories including whether the titles are available on Amazon Prime, so let that help you as you try to figure out movies you may want to watch over the next two days.
