Blinkbox signs film release deal

Blinkbox, the video streaming service from UK supermarket giant Tesco, has signed a deal with Entertainment Film Distributors (EFD) covering every major film released in the UK.

The agreement is the latest in a flurry of new content deals that Blinkbox has signed with studios and distributors, including a recent tie-up with Channel 4, despite Tesco hunting for a buyer for the service.

Key titles added with the EFD deal include American Hustle, The Butler, Transcendence, I Frankenstein, The Giver, Her and August: Osage County.

Tesco previously suggested it might sell or close down Blinkbox but the retailer is yet to update the status of this potential sale.

The supermarket chain took a majority stake in the VoD company in 2011, but the CEO who oversaw the supermarket’s push into online video, Philip Clarke, was ousted from the company over the summer amid a poor financial performance.

Tesco is in hot water with its shareholders after it emerged in September that it had overstated its half-year profits by £250m (US$405m) and new CEO Dave Lewis could see selling off Blinkbox as one way of plugging that financial gap.

Blinkbox, a transactional VoD platform, allows customers to rent or buy Hollywood movies and series such as The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and True Detective. However, unlike US firms such as Netflix and Amazon that operate in the UK, Blinkbox has not made the push into producing its own original content.

The platform recently added a Watch Offline function that allows customers to download purchased content on up to five devices. Users can use the function on both Apple and Android products.