Sky Rebrands The Box for Superhero Future

Sky is reassembling The Box as Sky 5 but it won’t be getting an HD facelift as part of its new look — at least not yet.

The “new” channel will go live from February 2, with a four-day marathon of its new flagship DC shows Supergirl, Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and Arrow.

“The channel has always been incredibly popular with our basic tier customers and so we undertook research to find out exactly what they liked about it,” Manager – General Entertainment Channels Rachel Thomson says.

“The feedback resulted in a name change to Sky 5 and helped shape the direction of the incredible work our creative teams have done with the new on-air look you’ll see from February.”

The DC marathon of the most recent seasons will include the crossover story arc episodes Invasion! as the curtain-raiser for new episodes of each of the four DC franchises from the following week. (All available DC titles will be available to basic customers on Sky On Demand.)

“With the introduction of TV heroes, including DC fan favourites Supergirl, Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and Arrow, alongside modern-day legends MacGyver and the team from  Scorpion, as well as other popular series like Pawn Stars, NCIS and The Simpsons, the time was right to give the channel a fresh new look,” Thomson says.

“We are thrilled with the contemporary look and feel of the new Sky 5 branding, which reflects our fun, iconic content.  As one of the most watched channels on Sky, we hope that existing viewers, together with fans of the new DC content, will continue to make the channel an entertainment destination of choice.”

Before Sky 5 launches, Sky will screen earlier seasons of the DC franchises on pop-up channels. Whether these will be in HD will depend on how much bandwidth Sky has, which will be determined by the amount of sports pop-ups over summer.

When Sky announced its Warner Bros DC deal, subscribers were promised “the quickest access to these titles as they play in the USA”.

However, that meant watching them on Neon (which costs $20 a month) or on-demand (in SD).

“Only the linear transmission is delayed and that will have the advantage of screening all episodes in a run with no interruptions,” a spokesperson said at the time.

“We intend to catch up with international transmission by the end of each series so the linear finales will screen express from the US.”

The spokesperson also said: “We are working on upgrading the channel to HD. We are hoping this will be in time for the new season debuts.”

However, this hasn’t panned out. When, or if, it will happen is still unclear but I hope to have clarification on Monday.

In the meantime, see the Sky 5 promotion here.