Depending on the tenure of your Cinema Blend fandom, you may or may not remember six months ago when we wrote an article on the Fox library, including The Wonder Years, heading to Netflix. In the months that ensued, The Wonder Years thing never happened, which is a real tragedy considering there are only limited releases of a few episodes available on VHS.
Now, in an attempt to fill the niche left by the segregation of Netflix into two separate companies, Amazon Prime has linked up with Fox to stream its movie and TV catalog online. The network already has deals with Sony, CBS, NBC Universal, and Warner Bros. so the Fox addition should round out the Amazon Prime collection quite nicely. According to THR, the deal will add more than 11,000 items to the streaming library, including the hard-to-find The Wonder Years. CEO Jeff Benzos had to say about the deal:
"Since launching earlier this year, we have now doubled the number of titles available in Prime instant videos, and there’s still more to come. Prime membership remains $79 a year, and of course features our unlimited free two-day shipping on millions of products. Prime is one of the best values anywhere.”
Even as Netflix makes deals with < a href=http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Dreamworks-Animated-Films-Coming-Netflix-Streaming-35408.html>Dreamworks and the like, Amazon Prime is shaping up to be one of the best deals out there for bringing visual media into the home. I won’t be ordering it for the price deal, though. I’ll be ordering it because The Wonder Years owns and isn’t even available on DVD. I have no idea how Fox finally figured out the copyright issues with the music used on the program, but as long as it isn’t like The Almost Famous deleted scene where the disc asks you to play “Stairway to Heaven” as the scene plays, audiences should be more than happy.
