“Star Trek: Discovery” is about to lose much of its global audience overnight.
While the series has been a CBS All Access/Paramount+ exclusive in the United States, globally (bar Canada) the series has been a Netflix staple for three seasons – episodes launching within hours of their U.S. broadcast.
Part of the reason for that was Netflix footed much of the show’s sizeable budget in exchange for overseas rights. It has proven to be a solid success with around 60% of the show’s audience said to hail from outside North America.
Today though, Deadline reports that ViacomCBS and Netflix have closed a deal that removes any stake that Netflix had in the series. As an immediate result, all three existing seasons of “Star Trek: Discovery” have been removed from Netflix and the fourth season originally kicking off on Thursday in the U.S. will now no longer be carried by the streamer.
Instead, the plan is to use the upcoming fourth season to drive subscriptions towards the Paramount+ service which is expanding its global footprint with a big push into Europe set for early 2022. Right now Paramount+ is available in more than 20 countries outside of North America, and is expected to expand that footprint considerably next year to around 45 (a far cry from Netflix’s 190 countries).
In addition, day-and-date releases have been scratched so even in markets that already have the Paramount+ service such as Australia, the new season isn’t expected to launch until well into 2022. In Canada, ‘Discovery’ will stay on Bell Media’s CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave.
Other current series in the franchise like “Star Trek: Picard” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks” will remain on Amazon outside of North America.
Source: Deadline
