NETFLIX LANDS RIGHTS TO STREAM HUNGER GAMES IN LATIN AMERICA

Netflix on Monday got a big push for its stalled Latin American rollout when it signed a deal with indie film distributor Telefilm that will give it to stream such films as The Hunger Games, The Artist, To Rome with Love, The King’s Speech and Midnight in Paris throughout Latin America. The deal is particularly remarkable in that it gives Netflix the right to stream The Hunger Games on August 18, the same day that it his retail stores in the U.S. Last month, Netflix’s CFO, David Wells, acknowledged that the company had been facing a number of problems, chief of which is the fact that the area has had little experience with streaming video. Wells noted that Netflix has no competition in Latin America — something that has hurt, rather than helped, the rollout. The Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying, “The key thing we have learned with Latin America is that when a market has a competitor set, that may actually help us … [so we] don’t have to convince or explain to people that click-and-watch, Internet-delivered entertainment will actually work.” He added: “Latin America is growing. We’re not losing to a competitor” there, he said. “It’s just not growing as quickly as we expected when we entered the market.” On Monday, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said that the company has signed up one million subscribers in the area.