Movies Anywhere Streams 3 Million Hours of Content Since Launch
Disney-owned Movies Anywhere, the industry’s latest stab at a unified cloud locker for home entertainment, is off to a solid start, if early usage data is any indication: Consumers streamed more than 3 million hours of content since the launch of the service in October, according to data shared at a Fox Innovation Lab CES event in Las Vegas this week.
Movies Anywhere has also been used to store close to 80 million movies in customer lockers, according to Movies Anywhere GM Karin Gilford. “As the app continues to gain traction, consumers can expect to see the integration of new partners and a continued evolution of product features that serve them in unprecedented ways,” she said.
The service launched in October with backing from 20th Century Fox, Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. and a catalog of 7500 titles. Out of the gate, Movies Anywhere has been supported by Amazon Video, Google Play, Vudu and iTunes. Consumers can store movies purchased from any of these retailers in their Movies Anywhere account, and then access them via the service’s apps for mobile and TV-connected devices.
Movies Anywhere isn’t the industry’s first stab at building a unified cloud locker. Disney previously offered similar features for its own catalog via the Disney Movies Anywhere service, which is scheduled to sunset next month as it is effectively being replaced by Movies Anywhere. Ultraviolet, a service backed by Sony, Paramount and Lionsgate, also tried to establish a unified cloud locker, but didn’t have its own apps — or a buy-in from Disney, for that matter.
With Movies Anywhere, the industry is now trying a unified approach to get consumers to keep buying movies. Exclusive content is supposed to sweeten the deal — a recipe that is working, according to 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment president Keith Feldman. “Movies Anywhere advances the experience of our most avid consumers and serves these highly engaged movie fans with relevant and unique content when their interest is at its peak, strengthening the entire entertainment ecosystem,” he said.
The studio currently has over 1,250 movies and nearly 1000 hours of additional content available on the service, and plans to include all future releases as well. Recently, it released an extra action sequence for “Kingsman 2” exclusively on the service, and the movie became the top performing title on the service during its premiere week.
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