Netflix recently announced that they were going to be making a more concentrated move towards originally created contented – and they’ve had success at that so far, including the Kevin Spacey starring House Of Cards. However, the company is also showing what some might deem to be an arrogant stance towards its existing deals with those whose programs and films it’s already sharing – and even if it is their intention to switch towards original content, they could be shooting themselves in the foot by doing things like this: losing almost 2000 movies from its streaming video archive.

Mashable reports that titles owned by Warner Bros., MGM and Universal will shortly only be available through the Warner Archive Instant service after an end to the licensing deal between them and Netflix. The company probably aren’t panicking as much as their subscribers are – like we said, we think this is part of some sort of plan of theirs – and the titles that are being lost maybe aren’t as substantial as you might think. For instance Mashable points out that the only one it’s really going to miss is Cruel Intentions – a teen classic for sure – but also highlights Deep Impact and Caged Fury as others to go south. Exactly.

However, what this could be is a precedent for the way that Netflix are going, with a Viacom deal possibly lapsing too – though according to Deadline they say they’re in still talks with the streaming company. That would mean the end of shows from Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1 and BET. A statement from Netflix read: “Netflix is a dynamic service, we constantly update the TV shows and movies that are available to our members. We will add more than 500 titles May 1, but we also have titles expiring, this ebb and flow happens all the time."

Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar's Cruel Intentions unavailable? Monsters!