‘Saturday Night Fever.’
Foxtel is strengthening its movie channels line-up by launching a classics movie channel on March 23, featuring many titles which will be available in HD for the first time.
Foxtel Movie Greats will fill a gap after the platform axed two classics channels at the end of 2012 and since the demise of TCM in 2016.
Recognising that subscribers increasingly are migrating from linear channels to streaming, Foxtel Movie Greats will also be available on Foxtel Now and a new “golden oldies” library will be accessible on demand.
Despite the rise of Netflix and the plethora of other platforms which offer movies, the category is a consistently popular component of Foxtel’s service.
Around 50 per cent of Foxtel’s 2.8 million subscribers take the movie pack, which costs $20 per month.
The movie greats channels were scrapped when Foxtel reconfigured its movies and drama line-up with the introduction of Premiere, Masterpiece and genre channels.
Foxtel Movie Greats will launch with a raft of titles including King Kong, An Officer And A Gentleman, Kramer vs. Kramer, Saturday Night Fever, The Godfather, Greatest Show On Earth, Risky Business, Flying High and Flying High 2, Chariots of Fire, Escape from Alcatraz, Death On The Nile, Murder On The Orient Express and Pretty In Pink.
Among the all-time classics at launch will be My Fair Lady, Cleopatra, The Great Escape, Ben-Hur, War and Peace and The Ten Commandments.
Film buffs will be pleased to know Foxtel has secured new, digitally-remastered prints of many of the titles so they will be seen in HD for the first time.
Executive director of TV Brian Walsh said: “We know how much our customers love movies and we recognise how important it is for them to have choice. That includes movies of every genre and from every decade. We recognised a gap in not providing a service dedicated to the all- time movie greats and that is why this new channel has been added to the line-up.
“The channel will feature titles from Hollywood’s illustrious past through to modern classics. It will mean that Foxtel customers will now have the choice of 10 dedicated movie channels, including our incredibly successful Pop-Up Movie channel,” he said.
Also from March 23, Bill Collins’ Golden Years of Hollywood will be available on-demand along with a large selection of his personal favourites and all-time classics.