Microsoft has closed deals with Maple Pictures, Warner Bros. and U.S.-based MPI Home Video to provide titles for its video-on-demand system Xbox Live which, it was revealed on Tuesday, will make its north-of-the-border debut on Dec. 11.

The system lets owners of the Xbox 360 video game spend points in order to download rentals of standard- and high-definition movies. Xbox Live debuted last year in the U.S. and is also available in France, Germany, the U.K. and Ireland.

The multiyear deal with Maple allows Microsoft to pick and choose among Maple titles for which the Toronto distributor holds the VOD rights, says Maple co-president Brad Pelman, citing the recent Jet Li punch-up War and the romantic-comedy Good Luck Chuck.

‘They won’t be taking everything because they’ve got a very specific core audience to appeal to,’ says Pelman, ‘but it’s a lot of titles.’

Other Maple titles in the mix include the docu-drama Air Guitar Nation and recent horrors and broad comedies such as The Condemned, Bug and Delta Farce. Warner, meanwhile, is bringing features including 300, Ocean’s Thirteen, License to Wed and, curiously, 1984’s Amadeus. U.S.-based MPI Home Video is providing the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, plus a few others.

A similar deal was struck between Microsoft and Lionsgate — which owns a stake in Maple, its Canadian spin-off — earlier this year at CES.

The movies will be available across Canada in both languages, which would seem to leave Maple’s partner in Quebec, Seville Pictures, out in the cold. Seville has since earlier this year had a title-by-title arrangement, covering all rights, to handle Maple releases in Quebec.

Pelman says the Microsoft deal is not meant to exclude Seville, but says there is ‘no way to discern’ if an Xbox Live subscriber is in Quebec or, alternately, Vancouver.