This Is Why You Can’t Have A Nice Netflix
You may notice that Netflix doesn’t have quite so many TV shows and movies today. Why? Because Hollywood, that’s why!
But to serious movie fans, especially those used to plumbing Netflix’s streaming library for lesser-known classics, May 1 is the end of an era: Streamageddon. It’s the day that hundreds of titles drawn from the vast Warner Bros. library, which includes pre-1986 titles from MGM and United Artists, will become exclusive to Warner Archive Instant, the classic film service that officially launched earlier this month.*
That asterisk is Warner officials denying that they required Netflix to pull the movies, and Netflix saying it merely decided to remove “less-watched titles” … like the James Bond franchise, which surely nobody cares about. The truth is murky, but the movies are gone.
Anyway, Warner Archive Instant doesn’t look that great unless you’re a real die-hard fan: It’s full of movies that haven’t been thought about for decades except by the most obsessive Tarantino-esque cineastes. But it costs $10 a month, so there’s that. As for me and my movie-watching household: We’ll probably just stick with our Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu Plus subscriptions for streaming video.
