Hulu Signs Exclusive Deal to Bring Criterion Collection's Arthouse and Foreign Films to Hulu Plus

Hulu said Tuesday that it has signed an exclusive streaming deal with The Criterion Collection, a privately held video distribution company that specializes in arthouse and foreign-language films, to bring to its $7.99-per-month premium service, Hulu Plus, the over 800 titles to which Criterion holds digital streaming rights. Criterion's digital streaming line-up includes films from such "auteur" directors as Antonioni, Bergman, Bresson, Bunuel, Chabrol, Chaplin, Clouzot, Cocteau, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Fassbinder, Fellini, Godard, Kaurismaki, Kieslowski, Kurosawa, Lang, Malle, Ozu, Renoir, Tati, Truffaut, Varda, and Welles.

Starting Tuesday, Hulu is offering around 150 Criterion titles on Hulu Plus (http://www.hulu.com/criterion), and plans to add more titles each month. The titles currently on offer include "The 400 Blows," "L'Avventura," "The Battle of Algiers," "Breathless," "La Jetee," "Jules and Jim," "M," "Pickpocket," "Playtime," "Rashomon," "Seven Samurai," "La Strada" and "The Wages of Fear." According to Hulu's SVP of audience, Eugene Wei, the initial line-up will over time be supplemented by a large array of additional content, some of it very rare: "But just as exciting are the titles still to come," he wrote on the company's blog. "These include not just more well-known classics but also movies that have been difficult or impossible to find on video in any format. 'Le Silence de la Mer,' by one of my favorite directors, Jean-Pierre Melville. The extended filmography of Kenji Mizoguchi. Early shorts by Chaplin. 'LAssassin Habite au 21,' Henri-Georges Clouzot's first feature. This doesn't even include the supplemental content Criterion is famous for and which we'll bring to the Criterion experience on Hulu Plus over time: commentaries, documentaries, interviews, original trailers, essays, and more. Many of these will be digitized for the first time."

According to Hulu, Criterion Collection titles will be presented on Hulu Plus without commercial interruption: any advertising associated with a film will run as pre-rolls, the company says. The company also says that it plans to offer a few Criterion titles on its free service, Hulu.com--though those titles will include the service's regular periodic ad breaks.

In a posting on its Facebook page, Criterion Collection explained why it decided to sign an exclusive streaming deal with Hulu, rather than with Netflix, and what the implications of the Hulu deal are for its relationship with Netflix: "We love Netflix, and they are still one of Criterion's most important partners, but Hulu demonstrated a real commitment to the Criterion brand that persuaded us they would be the better home base for our streaming efforts. It has never been easy to find Criterion movies on Netflix--'Criterion' is not even a searchable term there. Compare that with Hulu's willingness to develop a whole area of their site around us, brand the films associated with us, and develop the capability to show many of our supplements alongside our films. The energetic, independent, creative team at Hulu was willing to build their business around us in a way that just wasn't in the cards anywhere else. We chose to make a deal with Hulu because we feel the Criterion brand will in the long run be better represented there. As we put up more films and our supplements too--which have to be made available with the films--we felt that the treatment of the brand and flexibility within Hulu and Hulu Plus would enable us to provide a better user experience at the end of the day. We will continue to support Netflix on the package goods side and continue to work with them to provide Blu-ray and DVD copies of the films we release, but all of the films that are currently on Netflix streaming will be down by the end of the year. In case you're curious, we're as committed as ever to the physical goods side of our releases and will publish more DVD's and BD's this year than ever before."