Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The streaming-rights revolving door continues: Netflix will be the U.S. streaming home for the original trilogy of Universal’s Jurassic Park films starting next month.
That comes after NBCUniversal’s Peacock got a brief 17-day window on the titles — the original 1993 Jurassic Park, 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and 2001’s Jurassic Park III. For now, it doesn’t appear as if the two most recent titles in the franchise — 2015’s Jurassic World and 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom are available on a subscription-streaming service in the U.S.
Netflix announced that the trio of dinosaur pics, based on the Michael Crichton sci-fi novels, will be coming to the streaming service’s U.S. lineup starting Aug 1. The deal for the Universal movies shows that — even with the media conglomerates launching their own direct-to-consumer streaming vehicles — Netflix isn’t being completely frozen out of the licensing game for library titles.
Meanwhile, WarnerMedia also Monday announced a clutch of titles coming and going from HBO Max. Among the changes to the linuep: All eight of Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter films are expiring as of Aug. 23.
The spate of rights expirations comes as WarnerMedia’s HBO Max (which launched May 27) and NBCU’s Peacock (which bowed nationally July 15) have used blockbuster titles to reel in customers. While titles regularly come and go on streaming services, the relatively short windows for some big-draw movies on HBO Max and Peacock has been notable.
The first two movies in the Jurassic Park series were directed by Steven Spielberg. The original movie starred Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, while in the sequel Goldblum reprised his role from the first film alongside Julianne Moore and Pete Postlethwaite. Jurassic Park III, directed by Joe Johnston, featured the return of Sam Neill starring against William H. Macy and Téa Leoni.
Universal is set to reunite Dern, Goldblum and Neill for Jurassic World 3, slated (for now) for a June 21, 2021, release.
Netflix last week announced a gain of 10.1 million net new streaming subscribers in the second quarter, coming after its record 15.78 million in Q1, as the company again benefited from consumers in coronavirus quarantines. However, Netflix gave a smaller-than-expected Q3 subscriber forecast, as it expects slower growth after the COVID-19 bump in the first half of 2020.
