There is a Seasons’ turn, turn, turn …
Photo: Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection
This article was originally published May 2 and has been updated now that both takes on The Four Seasons are on Netflix — ’til license expiry do they part.
Alan Alda’s film The Four Seasons was in streaming purgatory until recently: You couldn’t watch or rent it on any service in the lead-up to Tina Fey’s new The Four Seasons TV adaptation now on Netflix. We wondered why one of 1981’s top-ten grossers was only available as a bargain-bin DVD from Universal or a slightly nicer Kino Lorber Blu-ray, so we asked around. As of last week, no one could give us a great answer: not Netflix, not original rights-holders Universal Pictures, and not Alda’s people. (“Alan hasn’t heard anything on plans for streaming The Four Seasons,” they emailed us Thursday, April 24.)
That all changed three nights later, when Fey announced at New York’s Netflix-operated Paris Theater, with the 89-year-old Alda in attendance, that his movie would join her show on the streamer today, Monday, May 5. (Both Netflix and Alda’s team confirmed this news to Vulture as well.) Incredible news for fans of cult-classic divorce rom-coms, old and new! “Are we having fun yet?”
Now, we never did get a straight answer as to why it was unavailable in the first place, but it’s not that uncommon for decades-old movies to slip through the streaming cracks. Universal confirmed to us that as the original producer and distributor, it held the rights, so throwing it up on NBCU’s Peacock — as Paramount+ did with the original Shōgun miniseries when Hulu’s new show took off last year — and/or putting it up as a digital rental were always options. Perhaps Universal didn’t see the value of licensing it until the 11th hour. (1981’s Four Seasons wasn’t listed in Netflix’s “coming soon” materials ahead of time.) So what happened between Netflix, Universal, and the Alda camp’s initial replies to Vulture and Fey’s sharing of the good news? A source familiar with the negotiations swore that, strategically, “nothing changed; licensing and promo windows were just being sorted.” Deals, like life, come at you fast.
