Now EE wants you to stay in on Orange Wednesdays
Mobile firm replaces popular cinema tickets scheme with streaming service
EE has announced a successor to its scrapped Orange Wednesdays scheme, which replaces free cinema tickets with a discount on streamed movies. EE pulled the plug on the long-running Orange Wednesdays scheme in February, claiming that viewing habits had shifted from the cinema to the smaller screens at home.
Instead, it’s now launched the EE Film Club, with the promise of a new “blockbuster” movie every week for only £1. The scheme is being offered in partnership with Wuaki.tv – a little-known rival to firms such as Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Blinkbox, which offers both movies and television series to buy or rent over the internet.
EE says it’s plumped for streaming in reaction to changing vierwer demand. “More people than ever before are downloading and streaming movies so they can watch at home or on the go,” claims EE’s chief marketing officer, Pippa Dunn. “With one in three UK adults enjoying digital entertainment every week – and this number is only going to grow – our viewing habits are clearly evolving.”
EE says the £1 film offers will launch at the end of March, although it’s yet to reveal which titles will be offered for a quid. New releases on the site include Interstellar, the Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, and Halo: Nightfall. EE says “the majority” of new releases and film rentals will be available as part of the offer, suggesting there will be some premium titles that you won’t pick up on the cheap.
There’s also a catch to the £1 movie deal. Customers have to text the word “film” to 141 to get their promotional code each week, with each text costing another 35p. Customers get 48 hours to watch the film from the moment they redeem the code, and the code has to be redeemed between Monday and Wednesday, so there’s no saving up cheap film rentals for the weekend.
Wuaki.tv is available through PC browsers, games consoles, tablets and smartphones. It’s also available through the company’s own EE TV set-top box. The offer is available to all EE, T-Mobile and Orange customers.