The Real Batman Villain: Hollywood's Streaming-Service Deals

Do you find it maddening when a movie or TV show you enjoy leaves a streaming service just as you were getting into it? This happens constantly. We know, because we're always writing up stories about what's coming to and leaving Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and others—and we often see the same title crop up on a specific service months after we already discussed it.

This is only getting worse as more streaming services launch. There are nearly 300 of them in the United States alone. Many are working to create exclusive content they'll never share (such as all those Netflix Originals or the new Star Trek shows on CBS All Access/Paramount+) or to take back their content to make it exclusive (as when The Office and Parks and Recreation went to Peacock). But plenty of licensed content that any streamer would want doesn't (yet) have a permanent home.

Services including ReelGood and JustWatch try to give people a handle on where to find the content as it skips from place to place. But to underscore exactly how hard that is, ReelGood sent us this infographic that shows the hopping around of two movies: 2005's Batman Begins and 2008's Oscar-winning The Dark Knight, the first two Batman films in the trilogy directed by auteur Christopher Nolan and his production company Syncopy.

You'd think that with Batman being a DC Comics character, and DC being owned by Warner Bros., and Warner Bros. running HBO Max, that Bruce Wayne would have simply ended up over on HBO along with a lot of other DC super-hero content (such as Wonder Woman 1984). But that wasn't the case, even in a year like 2020.

The films were on Netflix for a long time, left it as the COVID-19 quarantine hit, and then went to Hulu for a total of 3 months. In August, they became HBO Max exclusives—but only until November 30. They then went to Peacock for exactly one month (it was supposed to be six!). By January 1, 2021, they were back on HBO Max—where both remain, while also moving back to Netflix as of March 1. (You can also find Batman Begins on a third service: fuboTV.) Plus, you can buy and rent both films on Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Microsoft, and Amazon Prime Video.

This is the world of Hollywood wheeling and dealing. HBO and WB would, of course, love to keep all the Batmans all to themselves, but Warner Bros. signed deals with NBCUniversal as far back as 2016 that dictate these moves. A similar thing happened with the Harry Potter franchise—all eight films are WB-owned and helped with the debut of HBO Max, but are exclusive to Peacock. Again. For now.

Disney had similar problems trying to get all the Marvel Cinematic Universe titles under one roof at Disney+ because of previous deals. And that doesn't account for Sony running the newest Spider-Man flicks wherever it wants.

And as for The Dark Knight Rises, the third film in the series? You can't find that on any streaming service right now. It's available only to rent or buy.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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