Village Roadshow is reported to have confirmed it is in discussions with Netflix to bring the movie and TV streaming brand to Australia after years of speculation.
ZDNet reports that, Graham Burke, the co-CEO of Village Roadshow, said Netflix was on its way.
But reports over the weekend have revealed that consumers may stil have a wait ahead as Netflix focuses first on its European roll out before turning its attention to Australia.
"[On] Netflix, they're talking to our people about supply of products, so they are opening and coming to Australia," Burke told ZDnet reporter Josh Taylor.
Although there is no timeline on the announcement there are already numerous players in the market with services such as Quickflix, Presto, and Ezyflix up and running.
Foxtel entered the market with Presto in March, allowing subscribers to stream Foxtel movies from the broadcaster's eight movie channels both live and on demand – and ad break-free – via a monthly pass that costs $19.99.
Meanwhile, the free TV networks' combined offering is in the latter stages of testing.
All of which should in theory create better services and content, as well as increase price competition. It will also force the laggards to market to consider their approach.
Hoyts has put its streaming service on hold with the cinema group telling AdNews: “We have decided to postpone the launch of our Hoyts Stream product while we assess this initiative in the context of our forward growth strategy, our investment priorities and the current competitive market dynamics.”
Netflix operates an ad-free model. The streaming site gathers users data to create shows that they will continue to pay to watch. The best known example of that approach is House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey, which Netflix commissioned, knowing viewers would lap it up.
Similarly Netflix users highlighted that they like prison shows, so along came the second Netflix-created drama 'Orange is the New Black'.
The challenge Netflix will face in Australia is that it already has a significant number of subscribers that will be unlikely to switch from a low cost US service viewed via virtual private network.
Village Roadshow had not returned AdNews' calls at the time of publication.
Update:a Village Roadshow spokesperson couldn't comment regarding Nextflix coming to Australia, as co-CEO Graham Burke is currently in Europe and is the only person able to comment officially.
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