Amazon has become the latest online streaming service to announce it is moving into the feature film production business.
Amazon Studios VP Roy Price told The Hollywood Reporter yesterday that the studio will aim to make around 12 movies a year, with production beginning later in 2014 and films releasing in theatres around four to eight weeks before they become available online to Amazon Prime Customers.
The Amazon announcement comes hot on the heels of Netflix, which announced last September that it will make a sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that will be available online simultaneously with its exclusive IMAX cinema release. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos subsequently announced that the streaming service would be aiming to make 10-14 movies every year, including, intriguingly, four with Adam Sandler in its first tranche.
Both organisations have already had a degree of production success with episodic shows – Amazon’s Transparent won two Golden Globes last year, while Netflix’s globally successful House of Cards is set to launch Season Three next month.
The drive for streaming services to enter the production sector hasn’t been restricted to the US giants either. Dubai-based streaming service ICFlix released its first, Egyptian-produced feature, HIV, last October, and its second Al Makida in December. Although the IC Flix audiences have largely been available online so far, ICFlix CEO Carlos Tibi has announced plans to make 12 movies a year which will be seen on as many as 1,500 regional screens, and says he hopes to make ICFlix “The Warner Brothers of the Middle East.”
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