All Six ‘Star Wars’ Movies May Be Headed to Netflix Very Soon
With Star Wars: The Force Awakens only three months away from release, Disney and Lucasfilm are waist-deep in their plan to ensure that every human being on the planet with access to a movie theater will go see their new movie. Now, the next phase is upon us: put all six films on Netflix, to remind any doubters that they like Star Wars.
That’s the rumor, anyway. Extreamist did some digging around Netflix and discovered placeholder pages for The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. You can find links to each page at the link above, but here’s a screenshot, just in case they decide to vanish on us:
We’ve reached out to Netflix and Lucasfilm for comment, and will update if we hear back.
UPDATE: We spoke to Netflix who say that the above screengrabs are leftover pages from the company’s DVD catalog and unrelated to their streaming library. A little homework shows that the ID number on these URLs match with the ID numbers for the Netflix Star Wars DVDs. As for whether the Star Wars films will eventually make their way to Netflix Instant, “We don’t have any news on the streaming front.”
UPDATE #2: The Wall Street Journal reports that Lucasfilm does have plans to put five of the original Star Wars movies on Netflix (minus A New Hope, which is still owned by Fox), but only in Latin America, as part of an effort to build awareness among Hispanic moviegoers. The original article continues below.
If this is true and the Star Wars movies are coming to streaming, it’s a wise move from Disney/Lucasfilm and a major coup for Netflix. Making the original movies available to anyone with a subscription to the most popular movie streaming service in the world is tremendous advertising. They will undoubtedly be the widely disliked “special editions,” but that won’t matter to the kids raised on Star Wars: The Clone Wars who still need to be sold on the original trilogy.. And Netflix is surely patting itself on the back because adding the most popular movie franchise of the past 40 years to their library isn’t going to hurt anyone’s bottom line.
Although the must discussed agreement between Disney and Netflix doesn’t officially begin until 2016, getting these movies available to the widest possible audience before December is smart publicity. Now, even the handful of holdouts who aren’t interested in Star Wars: The Force Awakens are going to stare down Darth Vader’s face every time they load up Netflix.