France’s Canal+ Group has announced details of its new streaming SVOD service Canal+ Séries, which will feature high-end TV drama series, and launches on March 12.
The new service was announced at a press conference this afternoon by Franck Cadoret, Deputy Managing Director in charge of France, and Maxime Saada, Chairman of the Group’s Management Board. Some information was already leaked last Friday.
Canal+ Séries will offer a combination of Canal+’s Créations Originales shows as well as international series from FX, FoxPlay, Showtime, and others.
The move is to attack Netflix, which currently has more paying subscribers than Canal’s own CanalPlay service.
The new Canal Plus service will launch with the French premieres of Syfy’s Deadly Class, based on the comic book series of the same name about an elite academy specialised in training assassins, and the new season of Gomorra. At the start, about 150 series will be available, good for about 5,000 episodes.
Subscriptions start at €6.99 for one user, €9.99 for two users and €11.99 for four users. The service will launch for subscribers to Mycanal, later all other Canal+ distributors will be added.
Pricing is just below that of Netflix, which has overtaken Canal+ in France after a surge in subscriptions in recent weeks.
