FX Acquires ‘Venom’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse’, ‘Green Book’ & More Movies

FX Networks continues to snap up all marquee movie titles that become available. Over the past six months, the network has acquired such commercial and critical hits as Venom and the Oscar-nominated Bohemian Rhapsody, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and Green Book.

FX, whose movie deals also include streaming rights to make the films available on the network’s digital platforms, several years ago pulled away from off-network series, opting to spend the bulk of its acquisition budget on theatrical films instead. With a few rare exceptions, most notably The Big Bang Theory, movies significantly outperform off-network series on basic cable, they have longer shelf lives and deliver a wide range of audiences that can sample new original series launching behind them.

The list of recent FX movie acquisitions include Halloween, Bumblebee, Night School, The First Purge, Peter Rabbit, First Man, BlacKkKlansman, Book Club, The Meg, Breaking In, The House with a Clock In Its Walls, Instant Family, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, The Predator and Widows.

They join such top 2018 movies FX had previously as Mission Impossible: Fallout, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Deadpool 2, A Quiet Place, Hotel Transylvania 3, The Equalizer 2, as well as Skyscraper, Blockers, Pacific Rim Uprising and Maze Runner: The Death Cure.

FX has been the primary buyer for big movies and took in all of the top-grossing films of 2018 except for the Marvel and Pixar titles, which are not made available by Disney; the Star Wars movies, which are part of Disney’s Turner package deal; and Warner Bros, whose films largely go to siblings TNT and TBS.

It will be interesting to see whether Disney’s pending acquisition of Fox assets, including FX, would give the network access to ad-supported cable windows for Disney movies.