Tribeca Shortlist, the streaming movie service from Lionsgate and Tribeca Enterprises (the organization behind the Tribeca Film Festival), is releasing its Apple TV app today.
Why does anyone need another movie subscription, even if it only costs $4.99 a month? Tribeca Shortlist President Jeff Bronikowski emphasized his service’s focus on “quality and curation.”
“I just don’t have time to be watching movies that I don’t think are good, so I have trouble wading through huge, algorithmically-driven catalogs,” he said.
In contrast, Tribeca Shortlist offers a smaller catalog of movies handpicked by actors, filmmakers and other industry insiders, and usually accompanied by a brief video recommendation called a Shortlister. As evidence of quality, Bronikowski said the top 50 percent of movies available on the service have a Rotten Tomatoes score of about 90 percent.
Bronikowski added that the service offers movies from a variety of studios (not just Lionsgate), and it’s also looking to acquire “first-run, premiere movies that have been on the festival circuit.” Films currently featured on the front page include Platoon, Meek’s Cutoff and The Professional, which should give you some sense of Tribeca Shortlist’s variety. And if you’re worried about the selection being too limited, one-third of the catalog is also supposed to change every month.
The company isn’t releasing any subscriber numbers, but Bronikowski said growth is “about on-plan — things are going well.”
When the service first launched last fall, it was only available on iPad and the web, but it has since expanded to Roku, Amazon Fire TV and now Apple TV. Next up is Android, where Bronikowski said the app will allow subscribers to download movies for offline viewing, just as it does on iOS.
