Why are a lot of Movies Not Available online?

Cafe Society
1

Back in the day before online streaming we all had our local video stores.

The joy of my local rental place was walking through and finding movies or docus that I missed in theaters.

Now though it’s becoming harder and harder to find some titles online via itunes, Amazon and/or Netflix online.

I’m not talking about unknown indies. I’m talking about movies like The Idolmaker. Not a big, giant hit but a movie that’s known. It has appeared on Netflix from time to time but as of this entry (8/31/16) it’s available nowhere to rent (legally!) online.

Does anyone know who decides what movies are made available to the public for rental purposes and which aren’t?

THIS IS NOT A POSTING SEARCHING FOR THAT SPECIFIC MOVIE OR ANY OTHER. IT’S JUST A CONVENIENT EXAMPLE ABOUT THE ISSUE AS A WHOLE!

I understand that rights and such can be issues but it feels like it’s never a problem for current movies. Just older ones.

When the internet was new we were told all about “One day being able to dial up any movie or tv show we want and have it be available instantly!” But now it seems like unless you have a Netflix DVD account often times you’re out of luck finding a movie to rent online that’s available for sale on DVD/Blu-Ray.

Another example I just pulled out of the air is the 1984 movie Up The Creek. (Yes…Another non-box-office champ.) As of this posting it’s nowhere available to rent online.

Both it and The Idolmaker HAVE been available online before though.

It’s understandable that neither of the casts feature any super star names but Idolmaker has a rotten tomatoes score of 88% so it doesn’t seem that movie quality is the decision maker.

At this rate it feels like older movies that weren’t big hits will just disappear.

So who decides what movies are available online and when they’re available?

Anyone know?

(Again, those two examples are just random ones. I’m not looking for opinions on those movies. Just an answer to the question about who decides what’s available.)

Thanks!

2

the copyright owner in this case be it a studio or individual person

3

The service provider (Netflix, Amazon, whatever) negotiates a deal with the producer (Universal, Sony, MGM, whatever) to play X movies for Y time. Preferably they will be popular movies that attract new subscribers and retain the ones you have. If a movie is unpopular, there is no point in buying it. Those resources will instead be put towards bidding on hot new movies and creating original content.

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Older movies in copyright have to get their rights negotiated also, and I suppose Netflix and other streaming services don’t find it worthwhile to negotiate streaming rights for older movies with limited demand.
We had a thread in Cafe Society about the dissatisfaction many people felt with Netflix streaming. Many have dropped it in favor of the DVD service.
Also, there is increasing fragmentation of the streaming market because of relatively low cost of entry and because content providers feel they could get more from doing it themselves. This mostly applies to TV shows at the moment, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find movie studios getting on the bandwagon.

5

Just chiming in to agree with the poster that this is a big problem for movie aficionados. At this point there are lots and lots (and lots) of older movies that you just can’t see. Back in the Blockbuster days you could still find many. We need something like a public library for movies. (Yes, I know many public libraries have DVDs in stock. I’m talking about a streaming service that seeks to have a copy of every movie available.)

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Back in the day that Netflix was riding high and owned the streaming market the movie industry took note and steps to put an end to that using several methods. The end result is what we have now, a combo (mess) of renting individual movies, streaming subscriptions, the studios own failed ultravoilet.

But all and all it seems like they want this mess over the one source Netflix option of the past.

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The streaming services make pay per view services impractical. Plenty of movies would be available if the owners could get a reasonable return per view but customers prefer monthly subscription services with unlimited viewing of numerous movies. Most pay per view is on cable and then only the new movies get many buys.

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This question has mostly been answered regarding rights.

One option is to sign up for Netflix’s DVD delivery option, you know, what their original business was. Now they still don’t have every movie available, but their library is much more complete than their streaming service. And they do have both the Idolmaker and Up the Creek available.

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Idolmaker streaming free here: - YouTube

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The topic can probably do better in Café Society. Moved from GQ.

samclem, moderator

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On an unrelated note, it sucks that if you do find a movie it may cost $5 to rent. Considering that video stores (or what is left of them) tend to have tiers of charging, that is huge. I think many video stores had high prices for the new releases, then medium prices for the classics, then low prices (like $1) for everything else.

When you are used to paying $1 for a movie at the video store, now they want $3-5 to stream it, that sucks too.

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X X

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Thanks for your comment but it seems to not answer the itunes/Amazon question. I understand what you’re saying about Netflix and know that that’s part of the problem they have with their online selections being kind of weak. But your statement (if I understand it correctly) seems to point out that services like itunes and Amazon would be PERFECT places to host movies because they do offer individual one time (24hr) rental/viewings. As noted in my original post both movies I used as examples have indeed appeared on Netflix at one time and I believe Amazon also. (I have no idea about itunes but assume not because once they’re there they seem to stay. But I could be wrong about that. Forgive me if so.) I assume there must be negotiation reasons/costs that factor in. If a film costs $X amount to purchase the rights to but only generates $W in revenue it doesn’t become worth the investment. If that’s the case we might be looking at a bleak future.

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My apologies for the error. I’m new to the boards and when I tried to move it couldn’t figure out how. Thank-you for being kind enough to do so and to everyone else for your wonderful thoughts!

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Profit?

16

Business 101. A great answer. Thanks. I understand that servers cost money and maintaining them costs money but if we eventually live in a world where only the Top 25 movies of the year are available to rent we’re going to eventually get tired of Robot and Superhero movies.

Hopefully as tech progresses there’ll be a location/market for movies from the past.

2043 will be here before we know it and if Lars and The Real Girl has vanished from existence that’ll be a shame.

Thanks for your answer!

17

I understand that that’s an option. Thanks for the reply. My question is concerning how the decision is made regarding which movies to feature in an online capacity.

With DVD sales plummeting and the growth of online programming rising it feels odd that having to subscribe to a hard copy DVD service (when every brick & mortar DVD rental place has seemingly gone out of business) is still the best option.

But I’m forgetting that it’s all still so new. In 10 years time this posting subject might seem laughable. (I hope so!)

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

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I hypothesize that 99.97% of the good but not great popular fiction books of the past hundreds years are not available at your local library. Almost all can be retrieved by an interested person with a little effort.

I do not expect visual media to be any different.

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FWIW, this is exactly what happened to Blockbuster. When they started losing revenue to Netflix, they increasingly focused on new hit movies to the neglect of older classics. So you would see a store with like 100 copies of The Dark Knight and nothing else. They were dying anyway, but this strategy turn into a death spiral that accelerated their demise. As others have mentioned, competing services means the different providers are fighting over exclusive rights to the new content and dueling with exclusive original content, so I suspect the problem will just get worse.

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Perusal of the obscure regions of Netflix’x & Amazon Prime’s streaming lists show some really dreadful pieces of crap. Surely nobody hopes to make much money from that garbage.

However, their rights are probably pretty cheap. And they may be part of package deals with companies offering movies people actually want to watch.