Launching Viki Movie Rentals
At Viki, we understand that our passionate Viki audience loves to get fast access to the works that their beloved actors, writers, and producers have created. Unfortunately, during the COVID-19 period, to protect the health and safety of ourselves and our loved ones, many movie theaters across the globe remain shut, leaving many amazing movies stuck in the pipeline just waiting to be seen, and studios have had to find alternative ways of reaching audiences (source: NY Times).
Foreseeing that this situation may not return back to normal as soon as we’d like, Viki is bringing the movies meant for initial theatrical distribution directly to our users in the safety of their own homes.
We know that many of our Viki Pass subscribers hope that these premium movies such as Josee, Mission Possible, and New Year Blues would be available as part of their subscription and normally we would, when our content studio partners distribute the movies for video/home release. The movie rentals option lets Viki users watch premium movies during or soon after the movie’s theatrical distribution.
Movie production costs are often high and by going straight to video/home release without theatrical ticket sales, studios will be hard-pressed to recoup their investments in order to fund other movie projects, which in turn affects the livelihood of many individual cast and crew members in the entertainment industry.
Josee: Abandoned as a child, Josée (played by Han Ji Min), who is disabled, has spent most of her life on her own. Spinning magical stories as a way to cope with the harsh realities of life, Josée’s lives in a world more of imagination than reality, but when fate brings Young Seok (played by Nam Joo Hyuk) into her life, things begin to change.
To give non-Viki Pass subscribers a chance to enjoy more movies, we are bringing timeless classics such as Train to Busan, Okay Madam, and L-DK: Two Loves under One Roof to the movie rentals too. These movies will continue to be available to our Viki Pass subscribers without the rental fee, but non-subscribers can now choose to rent the movies without a Viki Pass subscription. We hope this provides more flexibility for all Viki users.
Another common question that our team receives is why is the movie purchase (not rental) option not available? At Viki, we typically license a movie from our content studio partners for a definite period of time for Viki users to watch (and rewatch), in a way, similar to how movies are only available in theaters for a certain period of time. Purchase typically costs at least two to four times the price of a rental. We chose to start with the rental option while we wait for theaters to slowly reopen, but if in the future we hear Viki users want the ability to purchase a movie, that’s something we’ll definitely take into consideration, just as we have with rentals.
We are very excited to have launched the movie rentals service on Viki and we hope you are as excited as we are! For now, the movie rental on-demand service is available in the US and Canada across our supported devices. Please stay safe and enjoy the show!
