Iconic actor Bruce Willis‘ breakthrough hit was the TV show Moonlighting, but, unfortunately, interested viewers can’t stream it. Most famous for playing heroic cop John McClane in the Die Hard franchise, Willis boasts a resume full of terrific films, ranging from horror hits like The Sixth Sense and crime epics like Pulp Fiction all the way to dystopian sci-fi mindbenders like 12 Monkeys. Like any actor, Willis has some flops in his past too, but for the most part, it never seemed to be long before he recovered.
Before he was a movie star though, Willis cut his teeth in TV, most notably as co-lead David Addison on Moonlighting, which aired on ABC from 1985 to 1989. Casting Willis’ David opposite Cybill Shepherd’s Maddie Hayes, Moonlighting was unique for its time, as a blend of comedy, drama, and romance centered on two private detectives that often hinged on the will-they-or-won’t-they sexual tension between its stars. Amusingly, creator Glenn Gordon Caron has said that ABC didn’t feel Willis and Shepherd had chemistry.
Recently, Willis’ representatives revealed that he was set to retire from acting due to a medical condition called Asphasia, which effects the sufferer’s ability to speak and understand language. That’s understandably led to a lot of looking back at Willis’ career and legacy as an actor, which for all intents and purposes began with Moonlighting. The problem is that anyone looking to watch the show in 2022 is out of luck, as it’s not streaming anywhere, and the old DVD sets are out of print and expensive. As Caron told EW, the reason behind Moonlighting‘s streaming absence is sadly simple: the show used a lot of pop music, and studio rights holder Disney feels the cost to license those tunes for streaming would be too high.
During the TV shows on DVD boom in the 2000s, consumers became quite acquainted with the issue of music licensing rights. Before DVD arrived, studios never really thought there would be a market for complete season or series home video boxed sets, and thus they hadn’t bothered to obtain those rights when initially arranging for the music to be used on the show. This led to many shows being released with expensive tracks dubbed over or edited out, and some shows just not getting released to disc at all.
While Moonlighting was released to DVD in 2005 with all the original music intact, disc distributor Lionsgate reportedly payed an exorbitant sum to license the songs used on the hit Bruce Willis show. Those DVD contracts also likely didn’t see streaming coming, so Disney would presumably have to renegotiate with all the various rights holders again in order to add Moonlighting to Disney+ or Hulu. As Caron points out in that same EW interview though, fellow music-filled 1980s show Miami Vice is currently streaming on Peacock, so perhaps renewed interest in Moonlighting will move Disney to reconsider soon.
