Australian streaming media platform Stan announced a multi-year agreement with Viacom's Paramount Pictures for exclusive rights in Australia to a broad selection of new television series and blockbuster films.
The licensing deal expands Stan’s range of long-term content agreements, which includes Showtime, Starz and MGM. Stan is 100% owned by Nine followed last year's merger with Fairfax.
Paramount's Looking For Alaska will be the first TV series to launch, premiering on Stan in Australia on October 19.
The eight-part series, produced for HULU, is based on the book of the same name by John Green and stars Kristine Froseth (The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair) and Charlie Plummer (All The Money In The World).
Other projects in development from Paramount Television include Made for Love and Station Eleven for HBO Max, the Sexy Beast prequel series, plus the Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio murder mystery Devil in the White City and Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles, both for HULU.
The Great, also produced for HULU by MRC Television, will premiere on Stan in 2020 starring Elle Fanning (Maleficent, The Beguiled) and Nicholas Hoult (The Favourite, Mad Max: Fury Road, X-Men: Dark Phoenix). The drama series follows Catherine the Great and her rise to power after marrying the Emperor of Russia. Australian writer and Academy Award nominee Tony McNamara (The Favourite) is writer and showrunner.
Stan's deal will also see hundreds of Paramount’s biggest feature films and franchises added to Stan in the coming months, including the Mission: Impossible, Transformers, and Star Trek franchises, in addition to celebrated favourites such as Top Gun and The Godfather Trilogy.
“Paramount has built a fantastic slate of premium scripted television series in addition to their iconic box office blockbusters, legendary film franchises and library of classics,” says Mike Sneesby, CEO of Stan.
“We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with Paramount under this new long-term output agreement as part of our ongoing commitment to bring the world’s greatest TV series and movies to Australians.”
Jonathan Greenberg, SVP Regional Sales Asia Pacific for Paramount Pictures Television Licensing & Distribution, said: “We are extremely pleased to continue working with Stan with this long term deal to bring some of Paramount Television’s most anticipated new shows exclusively to the service’s discriminating subscribers. These programs, along with films from Paramount’s world-renowned library, further enhance Stan’s impressive lineup of premium entertainment.”
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