Some of Peacock’s Top Movies Are Expiring From the Service Very Soon
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NBCUniversal just launched Peacock — and a surprising number of the big movies on the streaming service are set to roll off soon, with some leaving as early as tomorrow.
That includes the original 2009 “Fast & Furious” starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker from Universal Pictures, which is expiring at 3 a.m. ET on July 16, after barely 24 hours on Peacock. Departing even earlier, at midnight ET, is comedy “Evan Almighty” starring Steve Carell.
Then a bunch of movies are leaving as of July 31. Those include the original 2001 DreamWorks Animation hit “Shrek”; the trio of “Jurassic Park” movies from Universal on Peacock — the original “Jurassic Park,” “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” and “Jurassic Park III” — and all three of Warner Bros.’s “Matrix” movies.
Other movies leaving Peacock as of July 31 include “Children of Men,” “The Blair Witch Project” and 1989 film “Parenthood” starring Steve Martin. Those leaving within the next month include “Monster’s Ball” with Halle Berry’s Oscar-winning performance (expiring Aug. 10). The strangely short Peacock windows were spotted earlier by Gamespot.
A spokesperson for NBCU declined to comment.
The expiring titles are available on Peacock Premium ($4.99/month with ads, $9.99/month with no ads) and some of them are on the ad-supported Peacock Free tier.
Of course, it’s common for content licensed to streaming services to come and go on a regular basis. And, it’s worth noting, the large majority of the content available on Peacock — the premium tier has 20,000-plus hours and the free version has over 13,000 hours — will remain available for the foreseeable future. But for a newly launched service, it’s odd for titles (like “Shrek”) that are used to lure in consumers to be leaving within a short time period.
WarnerMedia’s HBO Max had a somewhat similar situation with several DC films last month. In mid-June, the streaming service said “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” “Justice League,” “Suicide Squad” and “Wonder Woman” would be leaving the service as of July 1. But after a fan backlash, the company said that “by popular demand,” HBO Max had extended the availability of those titles through December 2020.
