Netflix goes down under, plans Australian launch in 2015

By Alex Tretbar June 30, 2014

It appears that Netflix’s long-rumored arrival in Australia is finally a reality according to Graham Burke, the co-CEO of Australian film distribution and production company, Village Roadshow (the entity behind projects such as the Matrix trilogy, the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, The Great Gatsby, and The Lego Movie). Though Burke didn’t go into any details regarding precisely when we can expect such a move, the executive did say in an interview with CNET that it was “pretty widely known that Netflix is opening operation in Australia next year.”

Burke confirmed the streaming service’s continental expansion plans in a separate report from CNET’s sister site, ZDNet, claiming that Netflix has already opened a dialogue with his company and begun “talking to our people about supply of products,” thus concluding that they are opening and coming to Australia.

Of course, just because Netflix isn’t officially supported in a country doesn’t mean there aren’t still ways to access the service … Australians have used methods such as virtual private networks (VPNs) to blanket themselves with anonymity and access the popular video-streamer anyway. There are less complicated ways of attaining such content, too. When the service exclusively launched the latest season of Arrested Development last year, Netflix interestingly wasn’t the only one to see a traffic bump – reports suggested that the show’s new episodes were pirated around 100,000 times within the first 24 hours of availability. However, given there are plenty of Aussies already paying for Netflix, chances are they’ll be happy to continue when the need for VPNs and location blockers disappears.

[image: Ken Wolter / Shutterstock.com]

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Alex Tretbar, audio/video intern, is a writer, editor, musician, gamer and sci-fi nerd raised on EverQuest and Magic: The…

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