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Stan lands Roadshow Entertainment

Streaming service Stan has scored a coup in the battle with Presto Movies/Presto TV and the incoming Netflix by signing a major content deal with Roadshow Entertainment.

Stan gets exclusive SVoD rights to blockbusters including The LEGO Movie, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, The Wolf of Wall Street and Edge of Tomorrow as well as The Inbetweeners 2, A Walk Among the Tombstones, John Wick, The Judge, Wolf Creek 2 and Felony.

The arrangement also covers Roadshow’s TV series including Utopia, which won the 2014 International Emmy Award® for best drama, Australian productions Bikie Wars: Brothers in Arms, Brides of Christ and Working Dog’s Frontline and The Hollowmen and kids series LazyTown, Dino Dan and Animalia.

Co-owned by Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media, Stan launched on Australia Day, streaming film and TV content for $10 a month, with a 30-day free trial.

Stan will get access to the first-run movies at the same time as their premiere on Foxtel Movies. While most of Stan's deals are non-exclusive, the Roadshow package is a point of differentiation with Presto TV, which launched on January 18, and Presto Movies.

Roadshow was a natural partner for Stan because the distributor has an output deal with the Nine Network. Netflix was bidding for Roadshow's SVoD rights for its Australian service that will launch in late March, IF understands. 

Later this year Stan will be the only streaming service to air current Roadshow theatrical releases The Imitation Game and St Vincent as well as the Golden Globe®-winning biopic Big Eyes.

The deal spans a raft of library titles, some SVoD exclusives,  including The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings trilogies, Sex and the City: The Movie and Sex and the City 2, Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Red Dog, Mad Max and The Man from Snowy River.

“Roadshow had several of the biggest box office successes of 2014 and we’re thrilled to announce our partnership which brings Australia’s biggest subscription video-on-demand window film slate exclusively to Stan,” said Stan CEO Mike Sneesby.

Sneesby would not disclose figures but said the response from subscribers who signed up on January 26 was "much bigger than we imagined."  In a cross-promotion Nine screened the first two episodes of Transparent at 10 pm on January 27, drawing 178,000 viewers in the five metro cities for the first ep. Stan has exclusive Australian rights to the Amazon Studios series which stars Jeffrey Tambor as a husband and father who reveals he is transgender.

Stan's library will continue to grow as Sneesby said, "We are bidding on and buying more first-run titles that will come to the platform."