All CW shows are currently contracted out to Netflix The newest show Batwoman is not. All the Batwoman episodes are available at the free CW app. For the other CW shows only a few recent episodes are available there.
All DC live action.films for the last forty. years will be exclusive to HBO MAX
Whether any of these films will be shared.with.DC Universe is unknown as this time. If shared at all it is likely that only one or two of these films will be available here for a limited period of time and then rotated out.
HBO Max will cost twice as much as DC Universe per month. Exclusively is important to that brand. It makes no sense for them to have the full catalog of DC films on a site that costs half as much per month.
First, AT&T/WB wants to maximize revenue. They see that sweet, sweet streaming money and want it directly rather than contributing to other streaming services. Why share, when they can have it all? AT&T also wants exclusive content to differentiate their cellular service and drive usage of said service. Finally, they are hedging their bets as cable cord cutting continues to grow and offer HBOMax as a stand-alone service to compliment HBO premium cable.
Second, DC Comics publishing is a division that is a rounding error for AT&T/ WB. More money is provided by licensing toys, pajamas, and sheets before they add in the movies. Comics is a niche product which today is most valued as an IP test bed/generator. Prior to the success of the MCU, comics were seen as the red headed stepchild which embarrassed the âseriousâ filmmakers. Now they canât deny the power of the stories we have all loved for years. Why waste great IP on a niche service when it can be leveraged to millions of subscribers at a much higher price.
We all would love for DCU to be a one stop shop, but AT&T/WB now knows that they have a gold mine with DC, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Matrix, Mad Max, Jason, Freddy, Clint Eastwood, and more. They are going to use those assets to make HBOMax a compelling service just a Disney+ has Star Wars, Pixar, and MCU, and CBS Paramount has Star Trek. I hope they will either offer a combo subscription like Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu, or share the content on delayed basis of HBOMax first followed by DCU on a rotating basis. Just my two cents.
But only if HBO Max offers compelling products exclusively can it gain millions of subscribers at a price double that of DC Universe which is after all a niche service with a limited membership of dedicated fans that canât support such projrcts as Green Lantern or Sandman.
The quick answer is WB doesnât own the rights for every DC movie or TV show ever made. So this will never be a one stop shop for everything DC.
As WB has said that once HBOMAX goes live WB will not send out content to non-WB services. As I posted above, if the ONLY reason someone wants HBOMAX content is for DC movies, itâd be cheaper to buy them than subscribe to HBOMAX.
As others pointed out, it is certainly with the realm of possibility that DC films could be shared with DCU especially on a rotating basis.
Only once CW contracts are up with Netflix will they be folded in to WB streaming.
It would be great if WB shared all the DC assists with DCU and HBOMAX. Making all WB DC properties available on DCU would be a big âtwo fingered saluteâ to Disney+ and MU. It would garner huge fan support.
I just donât see why, if all someone cares about is DC, they would subscribe to HBOMAX. Once all the CW content gets moved from Netflix, that May be a different story.
The crystal ball is foggy until May HBOMAX launch.
This will never be the place for all things DC. Cartoon Network owns the rights to TTG, Disney, via Fox owns Batman â66, so thatâs never coming here. Michal Uslan owns the rights to Batman films (Swamp Thing too, if memory serves) so it would be up to WB to work out an exclusivity contract with him on those. Same with Suskind for the Christopher Reeves Superman movies.
We should have a cut-and-paste response about licensing agreements at this point lol
I do understand where some of the confusion comes from. People assume this is just a streaming service and believe itâs supposed to have everything, not knowing about the licensing issues. But on the flip side, like I always tell people, I donât remember it every being advertised that EVERYTHING would be on here. I think people. Hey, Iâm hoping some day we get the movies and CW shows on here, too, but what can you do about legal matters created before the inception of DC Universe?
The good thing is, we still get the original shows and most of them got additional seasons. People enjoy the show and are passionate about them. I love that we get older shows and theyâre complete. That alone is worth the price of admission, but we also get thousands upon thousands of comics, these message boards, the online store and so on.
I guess it comes down to expectations vs research.
It also depends on how AT&T/WB is structured. Cartoon Network was/is owned by Turner which is owned by WB. Does CN have the authority to grant streaming rights to non-WB services or will WB have tight control over them? Can WB work out a deal similar to Disney and Turner for streaming Star Wars for Batman 66? Or could WB do some kind of Oswald the Rabbit trade for Batman 66?
Who knows. It will be in constant flux as the media giants battle out the Streaming Wars. Just think, we can tell our grandchildren we survived the Great Streaming Wars of the 2020s.
Wikipedia excerpt on the Disney Universal deal to get Walt Disneyâs 1st creation, Oswald the Rabbit, back to Disney.
Disney acquires Oswald: The Al Michaels trade[edit]
Al Michaelsacknowledged that his contract negotiations had effectively tradedhim for Oswald, and spoke favorably of the deal.[19]
In February 2006, Disney CEO Bob Iger initiated a trade with NBC Universal in which a number of minor assets, including the rights to Oswald, were acquired by The Walt Disney Company in exchange for sending sportscaster Al Michaels from Disneyâs ABC and ESPN to NBC Sports.[4] At the time, ABC had lost its contract for NFL broadcast rights, and despite recently signing a long-term contract with ESPN, Michaels was interested in rejoining broadcast partner John Madden at NBC for the Sunday night package. Universal transferred the trademark of the character to Disney, and in exchange, Disney released Michaels from his employment contract, allowing him to sign with NBC.
The deal included the rights to the character and the original 26 short films made and produced by Walt Disney. The rights to the Winkler and Lantz/Universal-produced Oswald films were retained by Universal and other products related to the character were not included in the deal. Iger had been interested in the property because of an internal design document for a video game, which would ultimately become Epic Mickey .[20]
This almost sounds like a hostage exchange.
I guess they didnât get the memo on Not dealing with terrorists.
âThe Great Streaming Wars of the 2020s,â indeed.
Good share @TravisMorgan
I was talking to someone about this yesterday, this is such a flashback to the ISP wars of the late â90s thru the â00s. Eventually the heavy hitters will emerge and dominate. Using resources to buy up niche services. My hope is that Disney thinks they are to big to fail and misses opportunities others can exploited. I do have the gut feeling that eventually, as contracts for owned original content expire, Netflix could end up being Yahoo, a once major player brushed to the sidelines.
As a tech guy Iâve seen it over and over. Netflix killed Blockbuster by offering DVDs by mail with no late fees. Blockbuster couldnât see the paradigm shift because they had so much money invested in Brick and Mortar locations. When they figured it out it was too late.
Netflixâs investors were mad at the CEO for investing in Streaming so heavily. They didnât understand that another company could offer Streaming and put them out of the DVD mailing business. They also didnât realize that Netflix needed their own content because the content providers would figure out Netflix was just a distributor. Netflix real competition is companies like Amazon, Apple, AT&T/WB, and Disney who either have a large content library or have other revenue streams and use content to drive consumers to drive those revenue streams.
The toughest thing for a company to do is eat their young. If you donât do it someone else will. Look at Tesla and their crazy market cap number that values them as greater than GM and Ford combined. But Tesla has gone all in on electric as a small startup manufacturer to grow into the market share leader for electric vehicles. GM and Ford both have decades of manufacturing experience, but they canât make a desirable electric vehicle. Will Tesla survive, maybe, if not their technology will be purchased by a major car manufacturer who will. GM and Ford are too big and hidebound to move quickly to electric vehicles which will eventually replace the internal combustion engine.
Sorry for sounding childish here, but haha you said âfoggyâ haha. Lets get Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson on the case, yes I under stand there Marvel
The one scrappy component to Netflix is that they are chameleon in their business prowess. Remember that Netflix didnât even start out as a streaming service, they went toe-to-toe with the Blockbusters of the world by renting DVDs by snail mail. That business pretty much lost its lustre, although Redbox seems to still have some footing with their everywhere kiosks.
I wouldnât be surprised if Netflix reinvents itself again. Theyâve wisely been creating their own content for awhile and some of it is very good. Will they be able to outspend Amazon and Disney? No way. But there are other ways to compete ⌠I donât see them as Yahoo-like because of their company DNA.
And yes, this is just another lather-rinse-repeat process in the business world. Big business is always trying to get bigger itâs a vicious cycle. Even the most benign and benevolent companies must be aggressive to protect their market position if not their brand, for many reasons as Travis and others point out.
I first became aware of this phenomenon myself when I watched Ace Hardware get pushed out by Builders Emporium who pushed out Home Club and was pushed out by Home Depot only to confronted by Loweâs (local market experiences may vary). They seemed to have found an equilibrium (something like DC and Marvel). Ace by the way moved to supplying mom an pop shops.
But back to streaming in particular, DeSade and @Todd_Russell both make good points/predictions. I have come to similar conclusions and have often vacillated between âNetflix becoming the Yahoo of streamingâ and âNetflix reinventing itself.â I signed up with them about a year into their startup. I totally related to their apocryphal rental story, and loved their DVD rentals. But with so many streaming options, why wait for a DVD to arrive snail mail? And Iâve found much (not all) of their original content to be lackluster. So, I tend more toward the Yahoo theory not to discredit their ability to reinvent themselves. But theyâve made some co$tly blunders. Iâm getting the same foggy crystal ball reception as well; either way if nothing else Netflix with find their Ace Hardware niche.
@Aristarchus94.72134 Thank you and well said! I to wonder what will happen to Netflix (and entertainment in general). If AT&T, Apple, Amazon, and others only treat entertainment as a way to lure people to purchase goods and services it may be the new age of even more mediocre film.
Sorry, that just struck me as funny. I was thinking after the make everything avocado green in domestic housing back in the late sixties, they went to totally bland building construction in the seventies and eighties, then tried to dress up the brick and mortar strip malls with two tone contrasting paint schemes all to lure people to purchase goods and services. So I canât think of why you would think the entertainment industry would eventually produce more mediocre films.
Okay, seriously, Good point Travis.
yeah, it was the picture, really drives the point home.
So, I was crawling through the Office Hours thread; hosted by @Applejack; and I found this little nugget from @Reaganfan78 . And since we were discussing the rise and fall of various streaming services. I thought this would be a nice addition to our current thread. Itâs nice to know our streaming service is first and foremost, a fan service. It seems to me that whatâs coming for DC Universe will be nothing but good things. I really look forward to continued discussions and you know streaming stuff.
