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Netflix Rises from the Grave with ‘The Walking Dead’
Netflix is casting its eye towards premium series: the streaming/DVD-by-mail distrib has inked a multi-year licensing agreement with AMC that will cover prior seasons of The Walking Dead with season one made available beginning Friday Oct. 7, says Variety.
Season two will be made available just before the preem of season three, and so on.
Netflix has attracted plenty of attention in recent weeks as it has attempted to shift consumer focus to its streaming service, which is much less expensive to maintain.
The company introduced a 60% price hike on its most basic package in July and announced last month that it would distribute its DVDs through a separate division called Qwikster.
Reaction to the consumer cost increase has been negative, with the company losing more subscribers than anticipated and enduring some criticism over the gap in quality between its exhaustive DVD library and its less-complete streaming offerings. Deals like this one may help offset some of that criticism, but major content publishers like HBO are still holdouts as far as the streaming service is concerned.
Are you ready to go back?
After a record-breaking box office run and an extended cut re-release, A24 and director Kane Parsons’ Backrooms is heading home to Digital.
Backrooms will be available to rent or buy this Tuesday, July 14.
In the film, Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in Backrooms as the owner of Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, who discovers a strange doorway in the basement of the furniture showroom. He sets out to explore the mysterious, liminal space, walking headfirst into a creepypasta nightmare.
Renate Reinsve (A Different Man) also stars in Backrooms.
Will Soodik wrote the screenplay.
I wrote in my review, “Backrooms is at once complex and sparse, but never repetitive. It might be set in 1990, but it effectively captures modern anxieties and isolation in a way that frequently makes your skin crawl. While the journey ultimately loses steam by its cryptic end, Parsons’ visual representation of the human psyche disturbs like no other.”
YouTube prodigy Kane Parsons makes his feature directorial debut based on his creepypasta-inspired video series, which debuted in 2022 and has amassed over 190 million views to date.