Netflix To Dump Dozens Of Films, TV Shows On New Year’s Day
Netflix is wishing its subscribers, “Happy New Year” by eliminating more than 80 well-known movies and TV shows from its streaming service. So, now might be a good time for a movie marathon if you still want to watch such films as Titanic, Top Gun, We Were Soldiers, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Braveheart.
For those of you who’ve been living under a digital rock for the past several years, Netflix is an online service that, for an all-inclusive monthly fee of $7.99, lets customers “stream” movies and TV programming over the internet. With the use of third-party devices such as the Apple TV, Roku or Google Chromecast (among others), Netflix movies can be streamed directly to a home television set, rather than viewed on computers and mobile digital devices.
The service has proven a huge success, becoming a staple of the media diet for millions of consumers. As of the end of September this year, Netflix boasted 41 million subscribers in the United States alone, more even than the venerable Time-Warner-owned HBO cable TV service, according to a CBS Moneywatch report.
But the service is notoriously close-mouthed about which movies and TV shows are actually available on its service and for how long. Dedicated users who scour the internet can usually discover the information, however, and that’s what a group of film aficionados on the message board Reddit did recently as recounted on the Digital Trends website.
While the 80-plus films that will disappear from Netflix on January 1 include some hits and some classics, such as Do The Right Thing, Roman Holiday, Flashdance, and the Franco Zeffirelli-directed 1968 version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the list also includes trashy-but-fun cult films.
Among those: Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell, Foxy Brown, and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. And then there are some that are just trash, such as Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, The Faculty, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
But just in case you don’t have enough popcorn to make it through all 80 or so movies by New Year’s Day, never fear. Netflix will be adding about 70 more movies and TV shows that same day, and throughout the month of January, Streamers World reports.
Some of the movies that you’ll be able to catch on Netflix when the calendar changes to 2014 include: Thelma and Louise, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the Woody Allen classic Play It Again, Sam, the Clint Eastwood thriller Escape From Alcatraz, the film version of the Broadway musical smash West Side Story, and Mitt, a documentary about failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
What are some of the best movies you’ve discovered on Netflix?
