A licensing deal between Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Amazon will broaden Prime Video’s streaming library and bring anticipated titles to the service after a brief run on Peacock.
As part of a multiyear licensing deal that will begin in 2022, live-action Universal films will head exclusively to Prime Video after their earlier pay-one premieres on NBCUniversal’s own streaming service Peacock. Per the agreement, Prime Video and Amazon’s free and ad-supported streaming service IMDb TV will both snag a number of new and older Universal titles.
On Prime Video, Jurassic World: Dominion, The 355, and Ambulance will land on the service after their theatrical releases and earlier exclusive four-month run on Peacock. Amazon’s marquee streaming service will also get some of Universal’s classic titles as part of the deal, including films like Get Out and Love Actually as well as films from the Fast & Furious, Jurassic Park, and Bourne franchises. Minions: The Rise of Gru and DreamWorks’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish will eventually make their way to Prime Video as well.
IMDb TV, meanwhile, will exclusively stream a number of live-action and animated titles from Universal’s library, including The Invisible Man, Fast & Furious 9, and Sing 2. Animated films arriving on IMDb TV as part of the agreement include Despicable Me 2, How to Train Your Dragon 2, and Shrek 2.
The deal arrives as Amazon looks to expand the content offerings for its services, and follows a proposed acquisition of MGM to help broaden their respective libraries. But the Universal deal does feel significant in that many of the films debuting on the services are part of beloved franchises, as with the Fast and Jurassic films, signaling Amazon’s commitment to being a formidable player in the streaming wars.
In a statement about the licensing agreement with Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Amazon’s ad-supported service, Lauren Anderson and Ryan Pirozzi, co-heads of content and programming at IMDb TV, called it “another step forward in solidifying IMDb TV’s reputation as a premium free destination for blockbuster movies.”
Peacock, which is owned by NBCUniversal, announced earlier this week that it would become the exclusive streaming home of Universal, DreamWorks, Illumination, and Focus Films movies no later than four months after they debut in theaters. As part of that deal, the films will stream on the service for four months, head to other services, and then eventually land back at Peacock for the last four months of the regular 18-month pay-one window.
In other words, if you do happen to miss Jurassic World: Dominion or Minions: The Rise of Gru in theaters, you’ll be able to find them on one of these services eventually. You just may need to Google which one they’re streaming on, whenever you finally decide to take the plunge. Such is our streaming dystopia.
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