Thinking of having a night in? You might be able to get a recent rental at a discount as film distributors come together for their version of a sale.
It’s no use having a nice TV and a decent sound system if you can’t take advantage of it every once in a while, and if you haven’t done that in a while, this weekend could be as good as any.
There’s a good reason why, too: movie companies have apparently banded together to get film rentals out to Aussies for under three bucks, making digital rentals for recent releases a little lower from the Friday of February 21 to the Sunday of February 23.
It’s an event the movie companies call “Movie Frenzy”, and has previously been run before, basically getting film rental prices down across digital platforms, including iTunes on devices and the Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Fetch, Foxtel, Microsoft’s store, PlayStation’s store, and even the Telstra TV Box Office.
The list of titles is a recent one, and includes Ad Astra, John Wick Chapter 3, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Rocketman, and the recent Spider-Man title, Spider-Man: Far From Home, with these titles and more dropping their rental prices for the weekend.
“Movie Frenzy is now a highly anticipated event in the calendar of Australian film lovers,” said Jim Batchelor, Chairman of the Australian Home Entertainment Distributor’s Association.
“It’s a great reminder of the huge range of films always available when you want and without the need for a subscription,” he said.
However Australians may not have to watch the titles all in the one weekend upon making a rental decision, as most movie services offer up to 30 days before a rental period is finished. Services like iTunes will typically offer you 30 days to start watching a rental, with 48 hours of that rental available once you’ve started watching the film.
It means that if you felt like you wanted to watch one of these slightly cheaper Movie Frenzy titles another weekend, you could rent it for the weekend, not watch it (elect to watch it later, basically), and then when you do decide to watch it, the 48 hour period kicks in.
That should be useful regardless of how you plan to watch a title, whether or not it’s grabbed in the Movie Frenzy promotion, and means that digital rentals on an Apple TV 4K, a PlayStation, or even an Xbox One can last a little longer than merely rented at the time you thought you wanted it.
