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The Bodyguard: Whitney Houston Movie Pulled from Netflix Stream

by NowPublic Staff | February 20, 2012 at 01:00 pm

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Netflix Streaming Loses The Bodyguard

The Bodyguard, starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, was pulled from Netflix. Virginia newspaper publisher Dan McDermott spoke to a Netflix rep, who confirmed that The Bodyguard was pulled, and that the timing was no coincidence.

Netflix rep: "Okay Dan, I just went and talked to my main supervisor as to why the movie had been pulled and the reason it was pulled was the production company pulled the streaming rights from us because all the publicity after Whitney Houston's passing there was an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies. So they're going to pull all the streaming titles we have of Whitney Houston so they can make more money off the DVD sales of her movies."

It's more likely the work of Warner Bros. (the distributor) than Kasdan Pictures (the actual production company), but obviously the motive was to make more money from DVD sales on the back of Whitney Houston's death.

The Bodyguard is 20 years old: this seems a fairly desperate move. A better idea would be to leave the movie as it was in the Netflix ecosystem, capitalizing on the lower-cost of casual online viewing. In other words, are you feeling $20 worth of sentimental?

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Peacefultrends

at 08:48 on February 21st, 2012

Thanks for posting this. Is it random coincidence that Whitney H. passed on just before her new movie 'Sparkle' is released? Nothing else could create as much press for the movie. Hollywood is Hollyweird and is famous for it's 'Starwackers', just a thought.