Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Amazon Prime Video in France are to launch a new offer titled ‘Warner Pass’ – after WBD pulled its channels from Canal+ this week.
The offer will be made available exclusively to Prime Video members in France and will include HBO series as well as 12 channels including Warner TV, Eurosport, Discovery Channel, Cartoon Network and CNN plus their associated on-demand services. The offer will be available on a subscription basis from March 2023.
However, all Prime Video France subscribers will be able to watch the premiere of anticipated HBO drama The Last Of Us, which will launch on January 16 in both French and subtitled English, and each episode will be available the day after it airs in the US on Prime Video.
For the year ahead, the Warner Pass will allow exclusive access to new seasons of HBO series Succession, Perry Mason, The Gilded Age, Barry and Somebody Somewhere, as well as upcoming series such as The Idol, White House Plumbers and True Detective: Night Country and catalogue titles including Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Sex And The City, The Wire, Veep and Chernobyl. The deal does not cover Warner Bros. films or HBO Max Originals made specifically for streaming platform HBO Max to date.
The move follows a statement yesterday that WBD has failed to reach a new agreement with Canal+ to carry several of its entertainment channels. Despite pulling the channels, effective immediately, a WBD spokesperson told Screen: “We still have a good relationship with them.”
Sports channel Eurosport will continue to be distributed on Canal+ and Warner will continue to sell films to air on the group’s channels such as recent title Elvis.
The Canal+ breakup and new affair with Prime Video comes as WBD France continues to prepare to launch HBO Max in the territory in 2024. In the meantime, they continue to break out of local distribution contracts yet find ways to keep their content available for French audiences.
In the US, HBO Max and Discovery+ will launch as a single service this summer before Latin America later in the year while a European rollout is planned for 2024, although no further details on the European launch have yet been released.
On Monday, Vivendi-owned Canal+ said it had signed an agreement – pending approval by local competition authorities – to acquire Orange’s pay TV division OCS in addition to Orange Studio.
No comments yet