WarnerMedia Shutters FilmStruck Streaming Service

AT&T’s WarnerMedia business unit is winding down many of its streaming video businesses.

The latest victim? The classic movies subscription service FilmStruck, which launched two years ago to provide a digital home for independent, art house, foreign, and cult classic films.

In a statement released Friday, Warner Bros. Digital Networks and Turner say that FilmStruck will cease U.S. and global operations on November 29, 2018.

“While FilmStruck has a very loyal fan base, it remains largely a niche service,” the statement says. “We plan to take key learnings from FilmStruck to help shape future business decisions in the direct-to-consumer space and redirect this investment back into our collective portfolios.”

FilmStruck is the third digital video unit within the WarnerMedia portfolio to be shut down in recent weeks. Warner Bros. Digital Networks shut down the Asian soap opera and drama service DramaFever earlier this month, while Turner shut down its digital content studio Super Deluxe later that same week.

WarnerMedia was acquired by AT&T earlier this year. This month, the company said it would be launching a new WarnerMedia streaming service in 2019, one that would pull from the company’s vast library of content. It isn’t clear whether FilmStruck’s library of films will find its way to the upcoming service.

At the time, WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey hinted the company would shutter some of its digital operations to focus on HBO Now and the new upcoming service.

“We expect financial support to launch this product to come from a combination of incremental efficiencies within the WarnerMedia operations, consolidating resources from sub-scale D2C efforts, fallow library content and technology reuse,” he said at the time. 

 
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