TBS, TNT By Rights To Speed Racer And More

Turner Broadcasting’s TNT and TBS have signed a deal for network rights to several of Warner Brothers high-profile titles, most of which haven’t been released to theaters yet. Movies in the package include 10,000 B.C., The Dark Knight, Speed Racer, Get Smart, Yes Man and the Leonardo DiCaprio-Russell Crowe vehicle Body of Lies. The Warners/Turner deal goes well beyond just prebuys; six other pictures already released in theaters round out the deal, one of the biggest in the last few years: I Am Legend, Fred Claus, The Bucket List, Fool’s Gold, TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and the animated Ant Bully.

Warner Brothers is, in effect, selling an entire slate of movies to Turner in the network window. The studio pitched the Dark Knight package to USA and FX, the two other aggressive buyers of theatrical movies in cable, but Turner stepped up, at least in part because its rivals had engineered some recent major prebuys. USA bought Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from Paramount and Sex & the City: The Movie and Semi-Pro from New Line. FX locked up a batch of titles from Sony/Columbia, including two Judd Apatow movies, one of which, Step Brothers, stars Will Ferrell.

TBS will be able to start running Ant Bully in June; TNT will get TMNT in October 2009. The rest of the movies will trickle in to the two networks throughout 2010 and 2011. Before the titles get to TBS and TNT, HBO will get them in the pay-TV window as part of the network’s theatrical-output deal with Warner Brothers.