Los Angeles -- FX bought the rights to air 12 films in the
broadcast window, the network said.
Among the movies in the package: The X-Files, The
Full Monty, Jackie Brown, 54, Rounders, Starship Troopers,
Clockers, He Got Game, Grosse Pointe Blank and the new Woody Allen film,
Celebrity.
The network declined to detail the purchase price, but it
is believed to be in the area of $40 million.
The deal has one unusual wrinkle: FX will have to share the
rights to The X-Files, The Full Monty and Starship Troopers with the
Fox network.
Fox will get the first window, with the right to air the
films once, within one year. Once they air, FX can run them a number of times for one
year, after which the pattern repeats, FX vice president of programming Chuck Saftler
said.
The deal is similar for X-Files, except that it
carries a six-year window.
FX licensed the package from Columbia TriStar Television,
Universal Television, Buena Vista (an arm of The Walt Disney Co.) and Twentieth Century
Fox.
Some of the films will debut on FX in 1999.
Saftler said FX had two goals in buying the package: to
create event programming for the network and to let the studios know that it was a serious
buyer of films.
Also, he said, the films "gear us toward the
male-skewing brand that is going to be provocative in nature, yet purposeful and
playful."
FX joins such cable networks as USA Network, Turner Network
Television and TBS Superstation, which have also anted up for broadcast-network windows on
films.
