Movie streaming

Independent Filipino filmmakers should capitalize on the international streaming of movies over the Internet as a way to reach a bigger audience and generate new income streams.

If entertainment firms that provide video-on-demand services online can help struggling Filipino filmmakers make more money, and create more jobs here at home, then we are all for it.

We cannot fight technological advances, so we might as well take full advantage of Internet TV networks to help promote highly relevant Filipino movies for global viewers, including Filipinos based overseas.

Los Gatos, California-based Netflix Inc., which already has more than 100 million subscribers in 190 countries, including the Philippines, delivers streaming content through Internet-connected screens – from smart TVs, personal computers, laptops to tablets.

A smaller rival of Netflix, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based iFlix Sdn Bhd, or simply iflix, also offers streaming media to more than five million subscribers in 18 countries in Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa.

But unlike iflix that simply buys the exclusive rights to stream movies in other countries, Netflix also produces, co-produces or commissions original series, documentaries, and feature films.

It may now be possible for independent Filipino producers to sell their films to the likes of Netflix for online streaming abroad.

Netflix already offers several Asian films, mostly from India, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan and Taiwan, for international streaming.

Rep. Lito Atienza is author of the proposed Philippine Film Industry Tax Holiday

Local producers desperately need financial encouragement to be able to compete here and abroad against movies made in Hollywood, Bollywood and South Korea.--