Netflix continues to gain traction among consumers tired of having to have massive libraries of DVD movies on their shelves. Today the company"s blog site announced that Netflix has secured a multi-year deal to show movies from Miramax on its streaming video service. The movies from the film studio will begin appearing on Netflix starting in June. Specific financial details on the streaming video deal were not revealed.
Miramax was founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 1979 and was purchased by Disney in 1993. In July 2010 Miramax was sold by Disney to an investor group for about $660 million. Miramax is known for its embrace of films made for little money by independent directors such as Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino. Netflix has confirmed that films from those directors like Clerks, Chasing Amy, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 are part of the new streaming movie deal along with movies like Bad Santa, Cold Mountain, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love and others. Miramax also has a genre movie label, Dimensions Films, and Netflix will show movies from that brand as well, including some of the Scream, Halloween, and Scary Movie feature films.
Ironically Google was rumored to be interested in buying the streaming video rights to Miramax"s movies last November, but ultimately no deal was ever announced. Netflix is now competing with Google"s YouTube along with other online streaming video services like Hulu, Vudu and others for the rights to show movies from various studios.