Amazon announced Wednesday its free streaming service IMDb TV will be renamed Amazon Freevee.
The new name will take effect on April 27, the company said in a news release.
The retailer said the streaming service will also expand its original programming by 70% in 2022, with spinoffs of shows such as "Bosh: Legacy" and other series. It will also add more original movies.
Amazon.com Inc. said the ad-supported service has tripled its monthly active users in the past two years and is expected to launch in Germany later this year.
"We're looking forward to building on this momentum with an increasing slate of inventive and broadly appealing Originals, and are excited to establish Freevee as the premier AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) service with content audiences crave," Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, said in the news release.
Wednesday's announcement comes as the retail giant embraces a path to boost its streaming services. Last month, the company closed an $8.5 billion deal to acquire Hollywood studio MGM, making it Amazon's second-largest acquisition following its $13.7 billion deal with Whole Foods in 2017. That acquisition was targeted to make the company better compete against Netflix and Disney+.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults โ two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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