Lionsgate and Univision Communications Inc. have announced plans to launch a premium subscription video-on-demand service for the Hispanic movie-going audience in the United States.
UCI President and CEO Randy Falco and Lionsgate Chief Executive Officer Jon Feltheimer said the service will get up and running early early next year.
Their jointly issued statement touts it as “the first premium SVOD movie service designed specifically for the tens of millions of Spanish- speaking and bilingual Hispanic consumers in the U.S.”
They said the service will include Spanish-language box office hits spanning the comedy, family, children’s, horror and drama genres and current titles from across the Spanish-speaking world, with many available on the same date as their theatrical release in Latin American markets.
Titles from Lionsgate’s joint venture with Televisa, Pantelion Films, and Hollywood films from Lionsgate’s 16,000-title library and other catalogs dubbed into Spanish will also be in the mix.
Pantelion Films, billed as the first major Hollywood Latino studio, has rights to more than 70 percent of the top-grossing films from Mexico over the past five years, including “Instructions Not Included,” the highest-grossing Spanish-language film ever released in the U.S., the animated hit “Un Gallo Con Muchos Huevos” and the recently released comedy “No Manches Frida.”
Univision will offer the new service to cable and satellite operators individually, as well as in tandem with its own Univision NOW, a subscription service for its broadcast networks Univision and UniMas.
Univision will also license titles from its classic Latino cinema library to the new service.
–City News Service