Franchises First Up for New Movie Channel

Sky’s new Collection movie channel will launch next month with a franchise theme.

The Channel 35 service will replace the sporadic pop-up mini-festivals that used to play on Sky Movies.

Like those, the new platform will have a different monthly theme, with the first being devoted to a range of genres that have spawned numerous  sequels.

It will be a multi-hour rather than a 24-hour channel, depending on how many titles are in each themed collection.

For instance, I Know What You Did Last Summer will open the channel on August 9 and will play only twice: at 8.30 and again at 6.50pm the next night — as the curtain raiser to I Still Know What You Did Last Summer at 8.30.

The Godfather will screen 8.30 on August 11 and The Godfather Part II at 8.30 on August 12. The two will then play back-to-back from 2.25pm on August 13 in the lead-up to that night’s 8.30 broadcast of The Godfather Part III.

Here’s the rest of next month’s line-up:

• Bridget Jones’s Diary
• Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
• Bridget Jones’s Baby
• Die Hard
• Die Hard 2
• Die Hard: With a Vengeance
• Live Free or Die Hard
• A Good Day to Die Hard
• Miss Congeniality
• Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
• The Pink Panther (2006)
• The Pink Panther 2
• The Expendables
• The Expendables 2
• The Expendables 3.