The Walt Disney Company is pulling a feature on its Movies Anywhere digital film locker that allowed streamers to share some titles with their friends.
The feature, called Screen Pass, was supported by Disney and a handful of other partners who participate in the Movies Anywhere service, which allows customers to access digital copies of films they own on DVD or Blu-Ray, or that were purchased through some digital movie stories like Apple’s iTunes, Walmart’s Vudu and the Google Play Store.
Starting May 1, Movies Anywhere users won’t be able to share titles with friends through the Screen Pass feature, though users who send Screen Pass titles to friends will still be able to watch the films prior to the expiration of their pass.
One month after the Screen Pass feature is pulled, the service will stop supporting it altogether, meaning users who do share Screen Pass titles have until June 1 to watch them.
“We are committed to focusing on an experience which highlights the things our users are most passionate about, primarily growing their collections and watching their favorite movies across platforms and devices,” a statement on the Movies Anywhere website says.
Movies Anywhere isn’t going away anytime soon, at least not from the statement that was posted online. The service supports many titles published and distributed by the Walt Disney Company and its subsidiary 21st Century (Fox), along with films from Sony Pictures, Comcast’s Universal Pictures and Warner Bros Discovery’s Warner Bros Studios.
Movies Anywhere is supported across most popular streaming TV devices, phones, tablets and computers, and allows customers to watch films they purchased on DVD, Blu-Ray or movie stores across a number of other streaming services, including DirecTV Stream, Comcast’s X1 platform, iTunes, the Apple TV app, the Google Play Store, YouTube, Verizon Fios, Walmart’s Vudu, Amazon Video and Microsoft Movies & TV.
